Sunday, May 6, 2012

On Franklin Parker and Betty J. Parker, Pleasant Hill, TN, By Jean Clark

Source: http://crossville-chronicle.com/features/x1437246604/Mrs-Roosevelt-pays-a-visit-to-Pleasant-Hill April 2, 2012

Mrs. Roosevelt pays a visit to Pleasant Hill

By Jean Clark, Chronicle contributor, CROSSVILLE, TN — Franklin and Betty Parker of Pleasant Hill have been and are still extensive researchers and prolific writers. As teachers, librarians, researchers, professors, writers, editors, their combined careers led them to venues around the world and back again.

Musing on this journey, they state, “After almost 18 years here, we realize that settling in Pleasant Hill brought us back to the area where we met and received our higher education, a wonderful homecoming.  We are four-driving hours from Berea College, Berea, KY, where we met in 1946 (married 1950) and a two-hour drive from Peabody College of Vanderbilt University, where we attended graduate school.  Those colleges made possible all the opportunities we have enjoyed throughout our lives together.”



Their latest joint venture was their 17th yearly dialogue for the Pleasant Hill Book Review Group, which explored the life and influence of Eleanor Roosevelt following last year’s presentation on Franklin Roosevelt. They wanted to show Eleanor’s accomplishments and influence on FDR. Betty took on the persona of Eleanor as Frank fed her probing questions. Their popularity and acknowledged astuteness were reflected in the largest audience the Review group has ever had.

Some of the books they have reviewed in this way were Thomas (Tip) O’Neill, Man of the House; Myles Horton; Abraham Flexner, Karen Armstrong; Arthur Miller, Timebends; Stephen Hawking, A History of Time; The Kennedys; and Albert Einstein (based on biography by Walter Isaacson). In 1991, they presented a dialogue on “Eric Hoffer, the longshoreman philosopher” for the Southwest Philosophy of Education Society in Texas.



Frank wrote and Betty edited his doctoral dissertation on George Peabody in 1956, which was defended, accepted, and later published by Vanderbilt University Press as George Peabody, a Biography, 1971, republished in 1995 on the 200th anniversary of George Peabody’s birth with 12 illustrations. Their fascination with the largely forgotten founder of modern educational philanthropy, George Peabody, took them to London, changed their lives, and led them to 27 trips abroad.



Betty earned the Berea B.A. degree in 1950, and a M.A. degree from Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College 1956. She taught high school and college English, reading and social studies; was secretary to two college presidents; served on regional and local executive boards of the American Friends Service Committee, League of Women Voters, and United Methodist Women.



A competitive Kappa Delta Pi (education honor society) Fellowship in International Education took them to Africa for eight months during 1957-58. The British south central African colonies of Northern Rhodesia (later Zambia), Southern Rhodesia (later Zimbabwe), and Nyasaland (later Malawi) had formed a multiracial federation. Frank’s small book about their 1957-58 experience, African Development and Education in Southern Rhodesia, Ohio State University Press, 1960, led to Frank’s being asked to contribute articles about Africa to encyclopedia yearbooks: Americana, World Book, Collier’s, others, for over a decade.

Frank emphasized more and more international education during his 40 years of teaching at the Universities of Texas, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Northern Arizona and Western Carolina. He felt that teachers with intercultural-international understanding could help new student generations build a more peaceful world.   As longtime editor of the Comparative and International Education Society Newsletter, Frank learned of and publicized low-cost travel and international study opportunities for students and teachers.



To access 30+ of the Parkers’ recent articles in blog form, go to http://bfparker.hubpages.com/hubs/hot

 Do a Google search for Franklin and Betty J. Parker, TN and you will find numerous links to articles about them or written by them. Their list of publications would take many more columns.

At ages 82 and 90, the Parkers, participate and lead exercise classes, swim at least 6 times a week, walk all over Pleasant Hill, are the neighborhood confidantes and “go to” people for information and caring concern.

Frank recently has become a percussionist with the Pleasant Hill Ensemble, although he cannot read a note of music.

They laugh about an incident which happened in early Nov. 2007: “A local old timer, often seeing us walking arm in arm, picnic lunch bags in hand, shouted from his parked pickup: ‘Grandpa, are you holding her up, or is she holding you up?’ ‘We lean on each other’, Frank replied with a grin. Betty added: ‘If one falls, we both fall.’ Sixty-one years of a good idea.”  

End.  bfparker@frontiernet.net

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Wednesday, May 2, 2012

“How Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) Became First Lady of the World.”

Posted by bfparker@frontiernet.net in 13:45:49 | Permalink | No Comments »

“Eleanor Roosevelt’s (1884-1962) Influence on Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945): An Estranged Marriage Turned Political Partnership That Changed History.”

“Eleanor Roosevelt’s (1884-1962) Influence on Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945): An Estranged Marriage Turned Political Partnership That Changed History.”  Franklin and Betty J. Parker Dialogue, Given February 20, 2012, Uplands Book Review Group, Pleasant Hill, TN, bfparker@frontiernet.net

Betty:  Greetings.  Thank you for being here.

Frank:  This review follows and enlarges on our earlier [Sept. 20,] 2010, FDR review.1

 

Betty:  We knew that Eleanor helped FDR’s career but not how large her influence was.  We tell her story from her viewpoint to understand better how together they made and changed history.

Frank:  He needed her; she needed him.  He could not have done all he did without her.

Betty:  He’d been a lawyer, married 5 years, with children, when he ran for the New York State Senate.  It was a hard won first election.  His heavily Republican Dutchess County, NY, district had not elected a Democrat in nearly 50 years.

Frank:  This freshman state senator then boldly challenged powerful Tammany Hall.  He opposed its lackey choice as the state’s new U.S. Senator.  FDR won this battle, drawing admiration from NY Democrats and nationally.2

 

Betty:  FDR’s NY State Senate experience plus his solid backing of Woodrow Wilson’s3 1912 presidential election led to FDR’s appointment as Assistant Secretary U.S. Navy, seven years, 1913-20, including valuable World War I experience.

Frank: In August 1921, at age 39, FDR was stricken with polio.  Eleanor nursed him.

Betty: His political advisor Louis (called Louie) Howe (1871-1936), an Albany, NY, newsman, then helped Eleanor become FDR’s political stand-in.

Frank:  Louie Howe kept FDR’s handicap hidden from public view.  Few then and later knew how crippled FDR was.

Betty:  Eleanor, Louie Howe, and others helped FDR reenter politics as NY State  Governor, two terms, 1929-33, the early Great Depression years.  With Eleanor telling him things he needed to know, aided by Louie Howe, plus several Columbia University “Brain Trust” professors,4 FDR’s NY State relief work for the jobless drew national attention.

Frank:  FDR’s NY job-creating programs were models for his later New Deal presidency: building roads, waterways, public buildings, dams, plus other improvements.

Betty:  What enabled FDR to win four unprecedented elections was the shock of Great Depression joblessness, threat of a Hitler-run world, and anger over Japanese Pearl Harbor attack.

Frank: As a young man in his 20s FDR was considered a pleasant “light weight,” a charming “feather-duster.”

Betty:  Amazing, that world-shaking events thrust a crippled FDR and Eleanor into leadership roles during our country’s (and world’s) greatest crises.5

Frank:  Amazing, that their leadership during the Great Depression and World War II not only saved us from a Nazi-run world, but also gave us our social security safety net, G.I. Bill, United Nations.  New Deal programs, praised by many, damned by the rich, reinvigorated, reshaped the U.S., while retaining free enterprise.6

 

Betty: Result: most historians rate FDR the greatest 20th century U.S. President, second greatest of all U.S. Presidents after Abraham Lincoln.  Most rate Eleanor the greatest woman of the 20th century.

Frank:  After highlighting their lives, Betty as Eleanor tells Eleanor’s inside story; why, after a marital crisis, instead of divorce, she chose to be FDR’s political partner.

Betty:  Their marriage began in love, resulted in 6 pregnancies in 11 years, 1906-16.7

 

Frank:  In 1918, 13 years into their 40-year marriage, Eleanor discovered FDR’s affair with her younger beautiful social secretary, Lucy Mercer (1891-1948).

Betty: This discovery occurred when both FDR and Eleanor were deep in WW I work.  FDR then 36 was U.S. Navy Assistant Secretary.  Eleanor, 34 was their children’s main caretaker and a busy Red Cross volunteer.   FDR returned from a naval inspection tour in France and England.  Tired, ill with the 1918 flu, he was taken from his ship to their New York City (NYC) home.

Frank:  Unpacking his trunk Eleanor found Lucy Mercer’s love letters to FDR.  Shocked, hurt, she confronted ailing FDR, offered divorce.

Betty:  FDR’s horrified mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt (1854-1941), threatened to cut FDR out of her will if he divorced.  Louie Howe told FDR divorce would end his presidential quest, urged FDR to make amends, Eleanor to forgive, FDR to continue his political career.9

 

Frank:  With FDR’s apology and promise never again to see Lucy Mercer, their marriage continued.  Lucy Mercer married (Feb. 1920) a rich older socialite widower.8  Only after FDR’s death (April 12, 1945, age 63) did Eleanor learn that FDR-Lucy contact had continued, that Lucy was with FDR the day he died.

Betty:  FDR and Eleanor each overcame handicaps.  Eleanor grew up shy, frightened, plain-looking, in a rich, privileged Victorian family which prized female beauty.

Frank:  Eleanor’s mother, Anna Rebecca Hall (1863-92), the beauty of her time, married handsome Elliott Roosevelt (1860-94), Theodore Roosevelt’s (TR) younger brother.10

Betty:  Trouble soon surfaced.  Eleanor’s mother, ashamed of Eleanor’s plain looks, was herself shamed by husband Elliott’s alcohol and drug addiction.

Frank:  Eleanor’s mother, with Eleanor and two younger sons, separated from Elliott. Eleanor was age 8 when her mother died, age 29, of diphtheria.  One of Eleanor’s brothers died soon after.   Eleanor was age 9, when her father died disgraced.

Betty:  Orphaned, Eleanor and remaining brother were cared for by their stern old-fashioned maternal grandmother, Mary Livingston Ludlow Hall (1813-1919).  A sympathetic “Aunty Bye” Roosevelt (uncle TR’s older sister),11 rescued Eleanor by having her sent to Allenswood School for Girls in England, for 3 years, 1899-1902.

Frank:  Ordered back to NYC for her “Coming Out” party (1902), a willowy Eleanor, teaching at a ghetto settlement house, became engaged (1903) and married (March 17, 1905) to FDR, her fifth cousin once removed, whom she’d known on and off all her life.

Betty: He was of the equally rich and privileged Hyde Park, NY, Hudson River Roosevelts.

Frank:  Unlike Eleanor’s troubled childhood, FDR grew up secure, joyous, with aspirations from boyhood to emulate his idol, 4th cousin TR, Eleanor’s paternal uncle. TR was U.S. President when he gave Eleanor away in marriage.

Betty: In August 1921, FDR suffered severe illness and paralysis in their remote, rustic Canadian Campobello Island summer home off the coast of Eastport, Maine.  Louie Howe arranged FDR’s secret transfer to a NYC hospital.

Frank:  Eleanor, FDR. and Howe fought off MaMa Sara’s determination that FDR become the invalid manager of her Hyde Park, NY, estate.  While FDR struggled without success to walk, women, given the vote (Aug. 26, 1920), needed political awareness.  To keep FDR’s political name alive, Louie Howe groomed Eleanor to be FDR’s stand-in, a leader among Democratic women.

Betty:  FDR exercised vigorously, tried every cure.  During his seven failed recovery years, Eleanor became a political powerhouse, speaking, writing, organizing women for political awareness.

Frank:  FDR developed powerful shoulder, torso, arm muscles.  With strong hands he lifted himself from a wheel chair of his own design, into chairs, into car seats, into and out of bed.  Steel-braced from heel to hip, using a crutch or cane, gripping an aide’s arm with the other hand, he shuffled forward, appearing to walk.

Betty: Learning to function despite lifeless legs toughened FDR physically, matured him mentally, sensitized him psychologically.

Frank:  His 7-year failed struggle to walk somehow gave FDR, later, new patience to solve Great Depression and WW II problems.  He made his handicap work for him.

Betty:  Louie Howe was the driving force behind and between FDR and Eleanor.  Howe, having watched FDR in Albany, NY, sensed FDR’s political potential, selflessly gave the last 25 years of his life to nurturing FDR’s presidential ambition.

Frank: Howe had asthma, was unkempt, brusque, but a wizened political genius, a rare, selfless, dedicated president-maker.   ¶Now here is how polio crippled FDR re-entered political life.

Betty: 1924:  NYC’s Catholic politician Al Smith (1873-1944) hoped to be nominated the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate.  Smith needed respected Protestant politician FDR to nominate him.

Frank:  Louie Howe seized the moment, had FDR carried unseen into NYC’s mammoth Madison Square Garden.

Betty:  With limp legs steel-braced and leather-strapped from heel to hip, using a cane, gripping 16 year old son James’s arm, FDR shuffled forward to grip the sturdy lectern.

Frank:  Flashing his broad smile, FDR gave a rip-roaring nomination speech, ending with: “And so I give you the next President of the United States, Alfred E. Smith, the Happy Warrior of political battles.”  Thunderous applause!

Betty:  Result: while Al Smith lost the 1924 presidential nomination, FDR‘s stirring speech brought him much attention.  Nationally, FDR, not Al Smith, was the Happy Warrior.

Frank:  Four years later, 1928, Al Smith, was the Democratic presidential nominee running against Republican Herbert Hoover.

Betty:  Al Smith again needed FDR’s help, believing that if FDR ran for NY State Governor, he, FDR, would help Smith win the U.S. presidency.   FDR agreed to run.

Frank:  Result: Al Smith lost to Herbert Hoover, 1928.  But thanks to Howe’s maneuvering FDR narrowly won as NY State Governor.

Betty:  On that slim majority vote, FDR, as NY State 2-term Governor, as Louis Howe planned it, positioned himself to become U.S. President.   ¶Now back to Eleanor, born 1884 into the Oyster Bay, Long Island, NY, progressive-Republican Roosevelt family.

 Frank: Eleanor, back in NYC from Allenswood school near London, imbued with Mlle. Souvestre’s liberalism, taught at an East Side ghetto Settlement House.

Betty: The once ugly duckling, pretty at age 20, was surprised to meet again, be wooed by, and married to her 5th cousin, handsome, buoyant, politically aspiring FDR.

Frank:  Young FDR, tutored at home to age 15, attended, without special distinction, Groton, then Harvard, then Columbia Law School to be near Eleanor during courtship.  Eleanor confided to a cousin prophetically: I don’t know how I will ever keep him; he is so popular, so flirtatious.

Betty:  FDR’s elderly father, a widower, James Roosevelt (1828-1900), married much younger Sara Delano.  FDR’s birth almost killed Sara and Franklin.  Sara, adored, over-protected young FDR, made him feel special.

Frank:  FDR grew up with few playmates.  His father taught FDR to hunt, fish, swim, manage sailboats and motor launches in rough waters around their Campobello Island home.

Betty:  FDR’s noblesse oblige, absorbed from his father, reinforced by Groton’s headmaster, was steered by Eleanor toward uplifting the needy.

Frank:  Young FDR early determined to emulate his hero cousin TR.  FDR’s later hero was U.S. Pres. Woodrow Wilson, whose failed League of Nations FDR later improved upon through the United Nations.

Betty:  FDR early learned to evade MaMa Sara’s smothering presence by ruses,  dissembling, joking, joshing her, and keeping his diary in code.  Outwardly smiling, charming, self assured, winsome, eminently likeable, party-loving FDR was also privately secretive and cleverly conniving. 12

Frank: These characteristics, surprisingly, aided his political rise and his 12 year hold on presidential power.   ¶With that background, Betty, put on your Eleanor hat.  Describe your troubled childhood and later life.

Betty as Eleanor:  As a child I felt ugly, afraid, unloved, unwanted.  I sensed something wrong about PaPa, often absent, who, when home, loved me, promised to take me to wonderful places.

Frank:  What did you think when you pieced together family whispers?

B as Eleanor:  MaMa’a coldness to me, her early death, I saw as aggravated by PaPa’s drinking, drug use, extra-marital affairs.  ¶PaPa’s “nervous condition,” I later thought, came from a real illness, epilepsy, un-diagnosed, un-treated, relieved with excessive drink and drugs.

Frank: How did your troubled parents affect your later life?

B as Eleanor:  MaMa was pleased when I rubbed her migraine-pained forehead. I learned that if I wanted to be loved, I had to be useful.  ¶From PaPa’s unfulfilled promises I learned to expect disappointments.

Frank:  As an adult, how did you see your parents’ troubled lives?

B as Eleanor:  I saw their lives as cries for help.  Their suffering made me want to be useful, to help others.

Frank:  Orphaned, you lived with stern GrandMaMa Hall’s troubled family.

B as Eleanor:  Aunty Bye Roosevelt, Uncle TR’s older sister, who had studied abroad under wonderful Mlle. Marie Souvestre, urged GrandMaMa to send me to her London Allenswood school.  Those happy 3 years, 1899-1902, changed my life.

Frank:  What did you learn at Allenswood?  What was special about headmistress Mlle. Souvestre?

B as Eleanor:  Only French was spoken, with demerits when you lapsed into English.  My French nurse taught me to speak and think in French before I learned English.  I fitted in; learned great literature, history, art, music.  Mlle. Souvestre opened our eyes to human suffering; awakened in us the need for social service.  ¶Mlle. Souvestre saw that I lacked self-confidence, took me on holidays to France, Switzerland, Italy; let me travel un-chaperoned with a guide book to museums and historic places.  She gave me confidence.  I kept her picture on my dressing table all my life.

Frank:  Back to NYC.  Tell of your social work, courtship, marriage.

B as Eleanor:  I felt useful teaching dancing and calisthenics to disadvantaged girls.  On the train up the Hudson Valley FDR and I accidentally met, renewed our childhood acquaintance.  FDR invited me to Hyde Park and to Campobello.  With my maid as chaperone I happily accepted.

Frank:  Why did FDR pursue you?

B as Eleanor:  He was at Harvard College then, very open, talkative about going to law school, getting into politics, running for the New York legislature—following in Uncle TR’s footsteps.   I encouraged him to pursue his dreams.

Frank:  FDR found his ideal mate in you, serious, concerned, unlike his earlier flighty girl friends.  Being the President’s niece was a bonanza, better than a dowry.  He proposed, you accepted.

B as Eleanor:  MaMa Sara said we were too young, he 21, I 19.  She urged us to we wait a year to see if ours was true love.  FDR faced MaMa, determined to marry me.  Uncle Teddy, then U.S. President, offered us a White House wedding.  We preferred a NYC wedding.  Uncle TR  gave me away on St. Patrick’s Day 1905.

Frank:  How did you get along with possessive mother-in-law MaMa Sara?

B as Eleanor:  She dominated our early married life.   Even our children, when I corrected them, ran to MaMa, who gave in to their every whim.  I was stifled, cried privately, lost my self confidence.

Frank:  Your move to Albany when FDR became State Senator got you away from MaMa Sara.  There Louie Howe became FDR’s political advisor.  Back to the 1912 election of Democrat Woodrow Wilson: although Uncle TR was the Progressive party candidate, you and FDR vigorously backed Wilson.  How did FDR get to be Wilson’s Assistant Secretary, U.S. Navy?

B as Eleanor:  Through North Carolina newspaper editor Josephus Daniels (1862-1948), a major backer of Woodrow Wilson, who named Daniels U.S. Navy Secretary.  Daniels asked FDR to be his Assistant U.S. Navy Secretary, just the job FDR wanted, the same post TR held before he became Vice President and then U.S. President.

Frank: Jumping to the 1920 presidential election: Republicans Warren G. Harding (1865-1923) for president, Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933) for Vice President, were bound to win.  ¶Why did Louie Howe let FDR run as Democratic Vice President in a Republican win year?

B as Eleanor:  Democrats nominated weak candidate Ohio Governor James S. Cox (1870-1957).  Cox, needing geographic balance and NY State votes, wanted FDR, then 38, as his Vice President nominee.  Louie Howe knew that FDR needed national exposure.

Frank: Howe also wanted you, Eleanor, on the campaign train to strengthen the FDR-Eleanor political partnership.

B as Eleanor:  Louie Howe was right.  Republicans won.  But that lost 1920 campaign resulted in FDR’s national exposure, brought Marguerite Alice “Missy” LeHand(1898-1944) as his secretary, and Louie Howe to sharpen my political skills. 11

Frank: FDR hired “Missy” LeHand for needed post-1920 campaign correspondence.  She became increasingly useful as his secretary during his polio recovery years, governorship, and presidency, 21 years of devoted service.

B as Eleanor:  We all enjoyed “Missy” Lehand.  She became a family intimate, FDR’s secretary, his hostess when I traveled, his caretaker on his houseboat trips to exercise and swim in Florida waters and in Warm Springs, GA.

Frank:  Some thought of Missy LeHand as FDR’s “Office Wife.”  Were you  apprehensive, jealous?

B as Eleanor:  She deferred to me, was devoted to FDR, filled his needs.  ¶Overly serious, I often grated on FDR’s nerves.  He and I needed space.   Missy’s devoted care of FDR freed me for other leadership roles.

Frank:  How did Louis Howe groom you for leadership?

B as Eleanor: On the 1920 campaign train, ever-perceptive Louie Howe showed me how to help FDR’s career, how to increase women’s political awareness.  I marveled at Louis Howe’s devotion.  From 1920 onward I sat at his feet, followed his suggestions, learned from him how to speak, write, and serve.

Frank:  Name activist women’s organizations you joined and the activist women leaders you befriended.

B as Eleanor: I was active in the Women’s NYC Club, League of Women Voters, Women’s Division of the NY State Democratic Committee, Consumers League, Junior League, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.  I grew especially close to political activists Nancy Cook (1884-1962) and her life partner Marion Dickerman (1890-1983).

Frank:  At Nancy and Marion’s Greenwich Village home you met and learned much from avant-gard writers, painters, poets, musicians.

B as Eleanor:  We three lived together at the Val-Kill cottage  which FDR in 1926 had built for us in the woods away from Hyde Park.  We started a Val-Kill furniture factory employing local craftspeople.  Nancy and I taught at, and Marion was Dean of NYC’s Todhunter Girls School. 13 I loved teaching.

Frank: In 1924 by chairing the National Democratic Women’s Platform Committee, you greatly advanced women’s political influence.  You also backed Democrat Al Smith running for NY State Governor against Republican Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. (1887-1944), TR’s son,14 your first cousin. You created a stir driving your small car topped with a paper-maiche teapot belching smoke.  Explain.

B as Eleanor:  I wanted to remind voters of Republican Teapot Dome Oil Scandal during the Harding administration, when Republican officials were bribed to let private oil companies profit illegally selling U.S. Navy oil  reserves.15

Frank: Now to 1932: What were your goals on becoming First Lady in the White House?

B as Eleanor: I was 49, determined to continue active public service and to advance the goals Franklin and I shared.  Ours was a lively White House with family, guests, live-in assistants (Missy, Louie Howe, servants, others), ongoing activities without end.  ¶To ease the Great Depression FDR needed me to be his eyes and ears.  I was always on the go.

Frank:  FDR’s big November 1932 victory brought elation, hope, optimism, promise of better days.  Remember FDR’s uplifting campaign song?  How did it go? 15

Happy days are here again.  The skies above are clear again.  So, Let’s sing a song of cheer again.   Happy days are here again.

Frank:  And what song came out of the Hoover Depression?  “Brother, can you Spare a Dime?”

B as Eleanor:  Back to Pres. FDR, March 4, 1933: he swung into action; closed all banks to check their solvency; reopened sound ones quickly.  In his first radio fireside chat he told listeners: your money is safer in a guaranteed bank than under the mattress.  Congress, called into special session, in a hundred days, passed his barrage of 15 New Deal bills.  Jobs multiplied.  Confidence soared.

Frank:  Eleanor, your biographer, Doris Kearns Goodwin, wrote that you  were the  first White House First Lady to: hold regular press conferences, first to write a syndicated [“My Day”] newspaper column, first to give sponsored radio broadcasts, first to annually earn more than her husband’s presidential salary—and give it to charity, first on a lecture circuit; first to testify before congressional committees on needed reforms.  ¶In WW II after visiting U.S. troops in England and in the South Pacific, you urged FDR to create the G.I. Bill for returned veterans.16  Please comment.

B as Eleanor:  I started press conference for women reporters only because I wanted more women reporters hired, paid and respected equally with men.

Frank: The idea came from…?

B as Eleanor: Prize winning Associated Press reporter Lorena Hickok (1893-1968), who covered me in the 1928 and 1932 campaigns.  We became intimate friends.  Louie Howe helped me plan the news conference.15

 

Frank:  How did FDR and his advisors react to your press conferences?

B as Eleanor:  They encouraged them, sometimes used them to test opinion on New Deal programs.  If criticized, I drew fire.  FDR could then correct his plan to avoid trouble.  He’d laugh and say:  My Missus does what she wants, says what she wants, goes where she wants.

Frank:: You got many qualified women into top positions, such as  Frances Perkins (1882-1965).  In 1933 you urged FDR to appoint Perkins Labor Secretary, the first woman cabinet officer in history.  She created the 1935 Social Security Act.

B as Eleanor:  Frances Perkins worked for FDR when he was governor, 1929-33, and admired his zeal in fighting the Great Depression.  She was his chief cabinet ally throughout his 12 year presidency.

Frank:  You also initiated the National Youth Administration, 1935.  Why?

B as Eleanor: I wanted work-study funds for 18 to 25 year old high school and college students.  The CCCs took care of many of the over 25 year old jobless.

Frank:  You championed the rights of African Americans, who 60 years after slavery ended were still discriminated against.

B as Eleanor:  I also urged including African Americans in all New Deal programs, including the Homestead communities, the National Youth Administration, Civilian Conservation Corps, others.  Majority prejudice stymied my efforts.

Frank:  You hosted at the White House gatherings of African American leaders, including Walter Francis White (1893-1955), A. Phillip Randolph (1889-1979), and others.  They later led the 1950s and ’60s civil rights movement.  You pushed for anti-lynching legislation which failed, voted down by Southern Democrats who chaired powerful congressional committees.

B as Eleanor:  I proudly attended the 1938 interracial Birmingham conference on race relations, was told not to break the Alabama law about separate white/black seating.

Frank:  But your presence shouted loud and clear that segregation was wrong.

B as Eleanor:  I intervened when African American singer Marian Anderson (1902-93) was denied because of her race the right to perform at the Daughters of the American Revolution’s Constitution Hall, Washington, D.C.

Frank:  You publicly resigned your DAR membership; arranged for Marian Anderson to sing instead on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.  ¶You started the Homestead movement, first in Arthurdale, W.VA., for out-of-work coal miners; the second Homestead community was here in nearby Crossville, TN.  About 100 of these subsistence communities were formed in the U.S. to relieve poverty. ¶Describe your greatest  disappointments.

B as Eleanor:  That Social Security  omitted self employed farm workers, home makers, domestic workers, others not on a payroll; that universal health care was stymied by powerful medical/drug interests; that the State Department blocked efforts to save Jewish refugees, especially children.

Frank:  You helped FDR win his unprecedented third term at the 1940 Democratic National Convention.  Explain.

B as Eleanor: A third term in 1940 was then legal but without precedent.  FDR, as was the custom, did not attend the convention but remained at Hyde Park.   The problem was that he had not declared his own candidacy.  Other presidential contenders divided Democratic ranks.  The convention was in an uproar of indecision.

Frank:  From the convention Frances Perkins phoned you, Eleanor, saying: unless you come right away and say the right thing, another presidential candidate will be chosen.  On the plane to Chicago, you Eleanor, wondered what to say.

B as Eleanor:  I said, “This is no ordinary time.”  Europe is at war,  Hitler is winning, the U.S. is bound to become involved.  Our country needs FDR’s continuing firm leadership.

Frank: That was enough for a unanimous FDR re-nomination.   You got FDR his third term. ¶Then, on your own, after FDR’s death, Pres. Harry S Truman appointed you to the United Nations.  You chaired the contentious UN subcommittee that in 1948 completed the landmark “Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”  Explain.

B as Eleanor:  That Declaration stands as a moral document to benefit all mankind.  Working with the Soviet diehards during Cold War tensions required all the skills I could muster: patience, careful analysis of issues, sensitivity to cultural differences, awareness of language nuances.  I continued at the U.N. until 1953 when Eisenhower became president.  Then I volunteered to travel and serve through the American Association for the United Nations, to assure my husband’s legacy as a founder of the United Nations.

Frank:  My quick key ending questions/answers: ¶Your influence on FDR?  You were his rudder urging his help for people in trouble when they could not help themselves.  ¶Your estranged marriage?  FDR, spoiled by his mother, needed adoring ladies.  ¶Why you each remained political partners?  He needed your liberal guiding conscience; you needed his political power.  ¶How you both changed history, and in what direction?  You enlarged the middle class, created a safety net for U.S. workers, helped save the world from Hitlerism, kept U.S. free enterprise alive, made U.S. government more responsible for needy people.  ¶But let’s ask Eleanor herself:  what was your influence on FDR?

B as Eleanor:  I was the irritating liberal spur under his political saddle.  I insisted that he do more and more to advance human rights and well being.  He expected me to goad him.  He kept a basket beside his bed for my notes, requests, suggestions.  I was the conscience he wanted, needed, to fuel his political power to do good.  ¶Family connections, 5 children, 31 grandchildren, 40 years of marriage tied us together.  ¶When our 3rd-born died in infancy, when my only surviving brother died, FDR hugged me.  There were affectionate moments.  Deep down we needed and loved each other.

Frank:  Good job well done.   Rest well next to FDR.

Both together: Thank you so much for being here.

END with Footnotes, Books, Other References below_______________________

Footnotes:

1We hope to make both FDR and ER papers accessible on the internet.   Search google.com or bing.com or any search engine under Franklin Parker, 1921-or bfparker, adding:  Eleanor Roosevelt (1864-1962) and/or Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1962-1945).

2U.S. senators now directly elected by state voters were then (1910-13) chosen by state legislatures.  FDR led an opposition against Tammany Hall’s choice (a Tammany Hall lackey) and for a better choice.

3Woodrow Wilson, 1856-1924; 28th U.S President during 1913-21.

4“Brain Trust Professors :” Raymond Moley, Columbia University political scientist, city reformer, concerned with “anarchy of concentrated economic power.”  Adolf Berle, Columbia U., considered a prodigy while at Harvard, excellent in law and economics.  Rexford Tugwell, Columbia U. economist.  Other close FDR advisors: Felix Frankfurter, Harvard Law School, for economic decentralization, fair play through banking and securities regulations; close advisor Louie Howe.  See Burns book below, Crosswinds of Freedom, pp. 13-14.

5No previous major power world leader comes to mind who had FDR’s physical handicap.

6Critics (and there were many) said then and since that FDR and ER misused their power to socialize the USA and that FDR at Yalta, by not standing up to Stalin, lost Eastern Europe to Communism and brought on the US-USSR Cold War.  Most historians believe that it would have taken WW III to oust Soviet troops from Eastern Europe, that FDR, advised that it would cost millions in lost lives and treasure to invade Japan, needed and got Stalin’s aid in defeating Japan.

7Third-born Franklin, Jr. died in infancy (1909-09), with the same name given to fourth-born, 1914-88).

8A bereft Eleanor often brooded alone over FDR’s marital betrayal with Lucy Mercer in Washington, D.C.’s Rock Creek Cemetery, gazing at the landmark hooded woman’s statue named “Grief,” sculpted by Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907), on the grave of the suicide wife (Marian “Clover” Hooker Adams’ (1843-85) of Henry Brooks Adams (1838-1918). Did Eleanor contemplate suicide?  See under books below Cook, Vol. 1, pp. 235-236, 248, 280, 428, 492.

9For Louie Howe’s influence on the Roosevelts, see under Books below: Fenster, Julie M.

10 Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919, 26th U.S. President during 1901-09.

11Aunty Bye, also called “Bamie,” was Anna Roosevelt Cowles (1855-1931).  See under Books below:  Collier, p. 35.

12Protecting with secrecy his elderly father’s heart attacks reinforced FDR’s later secrecy.

13For Eleanor intimates Nancy Cook and Marion Dikerman, see: http://usasearch.gov/search?affiliate=nps&v%3Aproject=firstgov&input-form=advanced-firstgov&query=nancy+cook&buttonName=go&query-quote=

14Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. (1887-1944), President TR’s oldest son, succeeded FDR as Assistant U.S. Navy Secretary, 1921, under Republican Pres. Warren G. Harding, during the transfer of oil leases from the Navy to private oil companies but was not involved in Teapot Dome Scandal bribes.  For TR, Jr.-FDR rivalry, see: http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&=&q=FDR-Theodore+Roosevelt%2C+Jr.+rivalry&btnG=Google+Search

15Teapot Dome Scandal, Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall (1861-1944), See under Books below: Finer and  Garraty, Eds.,  p. 1062.

16For FDR’s four presidential and other election campaigns, see Israel, Fred L. Student’s Atlas of American Presidential Elections, 1789 to 1996. Washington, DC:  Congressional Quarterly, 1997, p. 111 plus index on FDR.  Also Rosenboom, Eugene H., and Alfred E. Eckes, Jr., A History of Presidential Elections From George Washington to Jimmy Carter, Fourth Edition.  NY: Macmillan, 1979 (Chapters X-XIII plus index on FDR).

17On Eleanor’s contributions, see under Books Goodwin, p., 617.

18Under Books below see Fenster.

Note: Eleanor Roosevelt’s  three important men intimates, not mentioned in text above for lack of speaking time, were:  NY State Trooper Earl Miller (), Joseph Lash (1909-87), and David Gurewitsch  (1902-74).  See descriptions under their names in google.com or bing.com or other search engine.

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962): Best Online Sources, Easy access, quick read:

http://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/abouteleanor/

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eleanor/filmmore/transcript/index.html

http://www.firstladies.org/biographies/firstladies.aspx?biography=33

For Time Magazine free access to FDR, ER, related topics: www.time.com/archives

The following mentions ER and FDR in all Wikipedia articles:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&ns0=1&redirs=1&advanced=1&search=Eleanor+Roosevelt&limit=500&offset=20

Eleanor Roosevelt  and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Best Books On:

Note:  Over 8.5 million entries under: Eleanor Roosevelt (1864-1962), Books By and About, in: http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&=&q=Eleanor+Roosevelt%2C+books+by+and+about+&btnG=Google+Search

Black, Conrad.  Franklin D. Roosevelt, Champion of Freedom, 2003.  Canadian author describes how FDR convinced Americans to struggle to win WW II in order to preserve liberty and democracy.  Depicts FDR as a man of strength and vision.

Brands, H.W. Traitor to His Class:  The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 2008.  University of Texas historian traces FDR’s New Deal legislation intended to save the American political economy; describes his forceful, cagey WWII leadership; and depicts his role in creating the postwar international order.

Burns, James MacGregor. Crosswinds of Freedom.  NY:  Alfred A. Knopf, 1989.  See index for Roosevelts and related topics.

Burns, James MacGregor.  Roosevelt:  The Lion and the Fox 1882-1940, 1956. Williams College political scientist, first of two respected FDR books, depicts FDR as Machiavellian; both a wily fox and a tenacious lion.  Using original sources, personal recollections of those who knew and worked with FDR, as he did himself, author   describes FDR’s weaknesses and deficiencies, but concludes that FDR had: “…courage, joyousness, responsiveness, vitality, faith, and above all, concern for his fellow man.”

Burns, James MacGregor.  Roosevelt: Soldier of Freedom 1940-1945, 1970.  Sequel to the above, covers FDR as World War II president.

Collier, Peter, with David Horowitz, The Roosevelts: An American Saga. NY: Simon &Schuster, 1994.  Excellent family background, both the Republican Oyster Bay L.I., NY TR Roosevelts, the Democrat Hyde Park, NY (FDR) Roosevelts, their interconnections, and intimates.

Cook, Blanche Wiesen.  Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume One 1884-1933.  NY: Viking, 1992.  Volume Two: The Defining Years 1933-38.  NY: Penguin, 1999.

Fenster, Julie M. FDR’s Shadow: Louis Howe, The Force That Shaped Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.  2009.  Intimate account of how newspaperman and political guru got

FDR into the White House.

Freedman, Russell.  Eleanor Roosevelt, A Life of Discovery.  NY: Clarion Books, 1993, p. 145.

Freidel, Frank Burt.  Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Rendezvous with Destiny.  Excellent account of FDR’s early years and struggle with polio.

Goodwin, Doris Kearns.  No Ordinary Time:  Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.  The Home Front in World War II, 1994,  Goodwin shows how FDR led the U.S to victory and how Eleanor championed social justice for African Americans and became a role model in the changing role of women.  Asserts that FDR made the fewest mistakes of any World War II leader.

Larrabee, Eric.  Commander in Chief:  Franklin Delano Roosevelt, His Lieutenants, and Their War.  Profiles all major WWII commanders, tells of FDR’s skill in choosing them (sometimes from obscurity), and explains many of FDR remarkably skilled strategic decisions.

Leuchtenburg, William Edward.  Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932-1940.  The New Deal created the Securities and Exchange Commission for safer financial markets, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to end bank panics, Social Security, unemployment insurance, Federal Reserve Board, rural electricity, Federal Home Agency (created modern mortgages), Fair Labor Standards Act, and the Civilian Conservation Corps, Wagner Act, farm supports, and GI Bill.”

Rauchway, Eric.  The Great Depression and the New Deal:  A Very Short Introduction.  A highly regarded history of the Great Depression and the New Deal.

Rowley, Hazel.  Franklin and Eleanor.  Highly readable recent account by a British-born author who regarded the Roosevelt marriage as mainly a happy one with both free to enjoy their roles and to lead separate lives.

Smith, Jean Edward.  FDR.  2007.  Meticulous re-interpretation of FDR’s life and accomplishments.  Much on Roosevelt’s personal life.  Smith admires FDR, criticizes his failings,  conveys the great significance of Roosevelt’s career.

Ward, Geoffrey C.  A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt, 1989.  Oliver Wendell Holmes said that FDR had a second class intellect but a first-class temperament.  Sequel to author’s Young Franklin Roosevelt 1882-1905.  Covers  FDR’s rapid rise, 1905-1928, New York State Senator, Navy Secretary, Lucy Mercer love affair, 1920 vice presidential candidate on the losing Democratic ticket, crippling polio, New York State Governor.

End.  Corrections, comments to:  bfparker@frontiernet.net

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Sunday, February 26, 2012

“Eleanor Roosevelt’s (1884-1962) Influence on Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945): An Estranged Marriage Turned Political Partnership That Changed History.”

“Eleanor Roosevelt’s (1884-1962) Influence on Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945): An Estranged Marriage Turned Political Partnership That Changed History.”  Franklin and Betty J. Parker Dialogue, Given February 20, 2012, Uplands Book Review Group, Pleasant Hill, TN, bfparker@frontiernet.net

Betty:  Greetings.  Thank you for being here.

Frank:  This review follows and enlarges on our earlier [Sept. 20,] 2010, FDR review.1

 

Betty:  We knew that Eleanor helped FDR’s career but not how large her influence was.  We tell her story from her viewpoint to understand better how together they made and changed history.

Frank:  He needed her; she needed him.  He could not have done all he did without her.

Betty:  He’d been a lawyer, married 5 years, with children, when he ran for the New York State Senate.  It was a hard won first election.  His heavily Republican Dutchess County, NY, district had not elected a Democrat in nearly 50 years.

Frank:  This freshman state senator then boldly challenged powerful Tammany Hall.  He opposed its lackey choice as the state’s new U.S. Senator.  FDR won this battle, drawing admiration from NY Democrats and nationally.2

 

Betty:  FDR’s NY State Senate experience plus his solid backing of Woodrow Wilson’s3 1912 presidential election led to FDR’s appointment as Assistant Secretary U.S. Navy, seven years, 1913-20, including valuable World War I experience.

Frank: In August 1921, at age 39, FDR was stricken with polio.  Eleanor nursed him.

Betty: His political advisor Louis (called Louie) Howe (1871-1936), an Albany, NY, newsman, then helped Eleanor become FDR’s political stand-in.

Frank:  Louie Howe kept FDR’s handicap hidden from public view.  Few then and later knew how crippled FDR was.

Betty:  Eleanor, Louie Howe, and others helped FDR reenter politics as NY State  Governor, two terms, 1929-33, the early Great Depression years.  With Eleanor telling him things he needed to know, aided by Louie Howe, plus several Columbia University “Brain Trust” professors,4 FDR’s NY State relief work for the jobless drew national attention.

Frank:  FDR’s NY job-creating programs were models for his later New Deal presidency: building roads, waterways, public buildings, dams, plus other improvements.

Betty:  What enabled FDR to win four unprecedented elections was the shock of Great Depression joblessness, threat of a Hitler-run world, and anger over Japanese Pearl Harbor attack.

Frank: As a young man in his 20s FDR was considered a pleasant “light weight,” a charming “feather-duster.”

Betty:  Amazing, that world-shaking events thrust a crippled FDR and Eleanor into leadership roles during our country’s (and world’s) greatest crises.5

Frank:  Amazing, that their leadership during the Great Depression and World War II not only saved us from a Nazi-run world, but also gave us our social security safety net, G.I. Bill, United Nations.  New Deal programs, praised by many, damned by the rich, reinvigorated, reshaped the U.S., while retaining free enterprise.6

 

Betty: Result: most historians rate FDR the greatest 20th century U.S. President, second greatest of all U.S. Presidents after Abraham Lincoln.  Most rate Eleanor the greatest woman of the 20th century.

Frank:  After highlighting their lives, Betty as Eleanor tells Eleanor’s inside story; why, after a marital crisis, instead of divorce, she chose to be FDR’s political partner.

Betty:  Their marriage began in love, resulted in 6 pregnancies in 11 years, 1906-16.7

 

Frank:  In 1918, 13 years into their 40-year marriage, Eleanor discovered FDR’s affair with her younger beautiful social secretary, Lucy Mercer (1891-1948).

Betty: This discovery occurred when both FDR and Eleanor were deep in WW I work.  FDR then 36 was U.S. Navy Assistant Secretary.  Eleanor, 34 was their children’s main caretaker and a busy Red Cross volunteer.   FDR returned from a naval inspection tour in France and England.  Tired, ill with the 1918 flu, he was taken from his ship to their New York City (NYC) home.

Frank:  Unpacking his trunk Eleanor found Lucy Mercer’s love letters to FDR.  Shocked, hurt, she confronted ailing FDR, offered divorce.

Betty:  FDR’s horrified mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt (1854-1941), threatened to cut FDR out of her will if he divorced.  Louie Howe told FDR divorce would end his presidential quest, urged FDR to make amends, Eleanor to forgive, FDR to continue his political career.9

 

Frank:  With FDR’s apology and promise never again to see Lucy Mercer, their marriage continued.  Lucy Mercer married (Feb. 1920) a rich older socialite widower.8  Only after FDR’s death (April 12, 1945, age 63) did Eleanor learn that FDR-Lucy contact had continued, that Lucy was with FDR the day he died.

Betty:  FDR and Eleanor each overcame handicaps.  Eleanor grew up shy, frightened, plain-looking, in a rich, privileged Victorian family which prized female beauty.

Frank:  Eleanor’s mother, Anna Rebecca Hall (1863-92), the beauty of her time, married handsome Elliott Roosevelt (1860-94), Theodore Roosevelt’s (TR) younger brother.10

Betty:  Trouble soon surfaced.  Eleanor’s mother, ashamed of Eleanor’s plain looks, was herself shamed by husband Elliott’s alcohol and drug addiction.

Frank:  Eleanor’s mother, with Eleanor and two younger sons, separated from Elliott. Eleanor was age 8 when her mother died, age 29, of diphtheria.  One of Eleanor’s brothers died soon after.   Eleanor was age 9, when her father died disgraced.

Betty:  Orphaned, Eleanor and remaining brother were cared for by their stern old-fashioned maternal grandmother, Mary Livingston Ludlow Hall (1813-1919).  A sympathetic “Aunty Bye” Roosevelt (uncle TR’s older sister),11 rescued Eleanor by having her sent to Allenswood School for Girls in England, for 3 years, 1899-1902.

Frank:  Ordered back to NYC for her “Coming Out” party (1902), a willowy Eleanor, teaching at a ghetto settlement house, became engaged (1903) and married (March 17, 1905) to FDR, her fifth cousin once removed, whom she’d known on and off all her life.

Betty: He was of the equally rich and privileged Hyde Park, NY, Hudson River Roosevelts.

Frank:  Unlike Eleanor’s troubled childhood, FDR grew up secure, joyous, with aspirations from boyhood to emulate his idol, 4th cousin TR, Eleanor’s paternal uncle. TR was U.S. President when he gave Eleanor away in marriage.

Betty: In August 1921, FDR suffered severe illness and paralysis in their remote, rustic Canadian Campobello Island summer home off the coast of Eastport, Maine.  Louie Howe arranged FDR’s secret transfer to a NYC hospital.

Frank:  Eleanor, FDR. and Howe fought off MaMa Sara’s determination that FDR become the invalid manager of her Hyde Park, NY, estate.  While FDR struggled without success to walk, women, given the vote (Aug. 26, 1920), needed political awareness.  To keep FDR’s political name alive, Louie Howe groomed Eleanor to be FDR’s stand-in, a leader among Democratic women.

Betty:  FDR exercised vigorously, tried every cure.  During his seven failed recovery years, Eleanor became a political powerhouse, speaking, writing, organizing women for political awareness.

Frank:  FDR developed powerful shoulder, torso, arm muscles.  With strong hands he lifted himself from a wheel chair of his own design, into chairs, into car seats, into and out of bed.  Steel-braced from heel to hip, using a crutch or cane, gripping an aide’s arm with the other hand, he shuffled forward, appearing to walk.

Betty: Learning to function despite lifeless legs toughened FDR physically, matured him mentally, sensitized him psychologically.

Frank:  His 7-year failed struggle to walk somehow gave FDR, later, new patience to solve Great Depression and WW II problems.  He made his handicap work for him.

Betty:  Louie Howe was the driving force behind and between FDR and Eleanor.  Howe, having watched FDR in Albany, NY, sensed FDR’s political potential, selflessly gave the last 25 years of his life to nurturing FDR’s presidential ambition.

Frank: Howe had asthma, was unkempt, brusque, but a wizened political genius, a rare, selfless, dedicated president-maker.   ¶Now here is how polio crippled FDR re-entered political life.

Betty: 1924:  NYC’s Catholic politician Al Smith (1873-1944) hoped to be nominated the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate.  Smith needed respected Protestant politician FDR to nominate him.

Frank:  Louie Howe seized the moment, had FDR carried unseen into NYC’s mammoth Madison Square Garden.

Betty:  With limp legs steel-braced and leather-strapped from heel to hip, using a cane, gripping 16 year old son James’s arm, FDR shuffled forward to grip the sturdy lectern.

Frank:  Flashing his broad smile, FDR gave a rip-roaring nomination speech, ending with: “And so I give you the next President of the United States, Alfred E. Smith, the Happy Warrior of political battles.”  Thunderous applause!

Betty:  Result: while Al Smith lost the 1924 presidential nomination, FDR‘s stirring speech brought him much attention.  Nationally, FDR, not Al Smith, was the Happy Warrior.

Frank:  Four years later, 1928, Al Smith, was the Democratic presidential nominee running against Republican Herbert Hoover.

Betty:  Al Smith again needed FDR’s help, believing that if FDR ran for NY State Governor, he, FDR, would help Smith win the U.S. presidency.   FDR agreed to run.

Frank:  Result: Al Smith lost to Herbert Hoover, 1928.  But thanks to Howe’s maneuvering FDR narrowly won as NY State Governor.

Betty:  On that slim majority vote, FDR, as NY State 2-term Governor, as Louis Howe planned it, positioned himself to become U.S. President.   ¶Now back to Eleanor, born 1884 into the Oyster Bay, Long Island, NY, progressive-Republican Roosevelt family.

 Frank: Eleanor, back in NYC from Allenswood school near London, imbued with Mlle. Souvestre’s liberalism, taught at an East Side ghetto Settlement House.

Betty: The once ugly duckling, pretty at age 20, was surprised to meet again, be wooed by, and married to her 5th cousin, handsome, buoyant, politically aspiring FDR.

Frank:  Young FDR, tutored at home to age 15, attended, without special distinction, Groton, then Harvard, then Columbia Law School to be near Eleanor during courtship.  Eleanor confided to a cousin prophetically: I don’t know how I will ever keep him; he is so popular, so flirtatious.

Betty:  FDR’s elderly father, a widower, James Roosevelt (1828-1900), married much younger Sara Delano.  FDR’s birth almost killed Sara and Franklin.  Sara, adored, over-protected young FDR, made him feel special.

Frank:  FDR grew up with few playmates.  His father taught FDR to hunt, fish, swim, manage sailboats and motor launches in rough waters around their Campobello Island home.

Betty:  FDR’s noblesse oblige, absorbed from his father, reinforced by Groton’s headmaster, was steered by Eleanor toward uplifting the needy.

Frank:  Young FDR early determined to emulate his hero cousin TR.  FDR’s later hero was U.S. Pres. Woodrow Wilson, whose failed League of Nations FDR later improved upon through the United Nations.

Betty:  FDR early learned to evade MaMa Sara’s smothering presence by ruses,  dissembling, joking, joshing her, and keeping his diary in code.  Outwardly smiling, charming, self assured, winsome, eminently likeable, party-loving FDR was also privately secretive and cleverly conniving. 12

Frank: These characteristics, surprisingly, aided his political rise and his 12 year hold on presidential power.   ¶With that background, Betty, put on your Eleanor hat.  Describe your troubled childhood and later life.

Betty as Eleanor:  As a child I felt ugly, afraid, unloved, unwanted.  I sensed something wrong about PaPa, often absent, who, when home, loved me, promised to take me to wonderful places.

Frank:  What did you think when you pieced together family whispers?

B as Eleanor:  MaMa’a coldness to me, her early death, I saw as aggravated by PaPa’s drinking, drug use, extra-marital affairs.  ¶PaPa’s “nervous condition,” I later thought, came from a real illness, epilepsy, un-diagnosed, un-treated, relieved with excessive drink and drugs.

Frank: How did your troubled parents affect your later life?

B as Eleanor:  MaMa was pleased when I rubbed her migraine-pained forehead. I learned that if I wanted to be loved, I had to be useful.  ¶From PaPa’s unfulfilled promises I learned to expect disappointments.

Frank:  As an adult, how did you see your parents’ troubled lives?

B as Eleanor:  I saw their lives as cries for help.  Their suffering made me want to be useful, to help others.

Frank:  Orphaned, you lived with stern GrandMaMa Hall’s troubled family.

B as Eleanor:  Aunty Bye Roosevelt, Uncle TR’s older sister, who had studied abroad under wonderful Mlle. Marie Souvestre, urged GrandMaMa to send me to her London Allenswood school.  Those happy 3 years, 1899-1902, changed my life.

Frank:  What did you learn at Allenswood?  What was special about headmistress Mlle. Souvestre?

B as Eleanor:  Only French was spoken, with demerits when you lapsed into English.  My French nurse taught me to speak and think in French before I learned English.  I fitted in; learned great literature, history, art, music.  Mlle. Souvestre opened our eyes to human suffering; awakened in us the need for social service.  ¶Mlle. Souvestre saw that I lacked self-confidence, took me on holidays to France, Switzerland, Italy; let me travel un-chaperoned with a guide book to museums and historic places.  She gave me confidence.  I kept her picture on my dressing table all my life.

Frank:  Back to NYC.  Tell of your social work, courtship, marriage.

B as Eleanor:  I felt useful teaching dancing and calisthenics to disadvantaged girls.  On the train up the Hudson Valley FDR and I accidentally met, renewed our childhood acquaintance.  FDR invited me to Hyde Park and to Campobello.  With my maid as chaperone I happily accepted.

Frank:  Why did FDR pursue you?

B as Eleanor:  He was at Harvard College then, very open, talkative about going to law school, getting into politics, running for the New York legislature—following in Uncle TR’s footsteps.   I encouraged him to pursue his dreams.

Frank:  FDR found his ideal mate in you, serious, concerned, unlike his earlier flighty girl friends.  Being the President’s niece was a bonanza, better than a dowry.  He proposed, you accepted.

B as Eleanor:  MaMa Sara said we were too young, he 21, I 19.  She urged us to we wait a year to see if ours was true love.  FDR faced MaMa, determined to marry me.  Uncle Teddy, then U.S. President, offered us a White House wedding.  We preferred a NYC wedding.  Uncle TR  gave me away on St. Patrick’s Day 1905.

Frank:  How did you get along with possessive mother-in-law MaMa Sara?

B as Eleanor:  She dominated our early married life.   Even our children, when I corrected them, ran to MaMa, who gave in to their every whim.  I was stifled, cried privately, lost my self confidence.

Frank:  Your move to Albany when FDR became State Senator got you away from MaMa Sara.  There Louie Howe became FDR’s political advisor.  Back to the 1912 election of Democrat Woodrow Wilson: although Uncle TR was the Progressive party candidate, you and FDR vigorously backed Wilson.  How did FDR get to be Wilson’s Assistant Secretary, U.S. Navy?

B as Eleanor:  Through North Carolina newspaper editor Josephus Daniels (1862-1948), a major backer of Woodrow Wilson, who named Daniels U.S. Navy Secretary.  Daniels asked FDR to be his Assistant U.S. Navy Secretary, just the job FDR wanted, the same post TR held before he became Vice President and then U.S. President.

Frank: Jumping to the 1920 presidential election: Republicans Warren G. Harding (1865-1923) for president, Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933) for Vice President, were bound to win.  ¶Why did Louie Howe let FDR run as Democratic Vice President in a Republican win year?

B as Eleanor:  Democrats nominated weak candidate Ohio Governor James S. Cox (1870-1957).  Cox, needing geographic balance and NY State votes, wanted FDR, then 38, as his Vice President nominee.  Louie Howe knew that FDR needed national exposure.

Frank: Howe also wanted you, Eleanor, on the campaign train to strengthen the FDR-Eleanor political partnership.

B as Eleanor:  Louie Howe was right.  Republicans won.  But that lost 1920 campaign resulted in FDR’s national exposure, brought Marguerite Alice “Missy” LeHand(1898-1944) as his secretary, and Louie Howe to sharpen my political skills. 11

Frank: FDR hired “Missy” LeHand for needed post-1920 campaign correspondence.  She became increasingly useful as his secretary during his polio recovery years, governorship, and presidency, 21 years of devoted service.

B as Eleanor:  We all enjoyed “Missy” Lehand.  She became a family intimate, FDR’s secretary, his hostess when I traveled, his caretaker on his houseboat trips to exercise and swim in Florida waters and in Warm Springs, GA.

Frank:  Some thought of Missy LeHand as FDR’s “Office Wife.”  Were you  apprehensive, jealous?

B as Eleanor:  She deferred to me, was devoted to FDR, filled his needs.  ¶Overly serious, I often grated on FDR’s nerves.  He and I needed space.   Missy’s devoted care of FDR freed me for other leadership roles.

Frank:  How did Louis Howe groom you for leadership?

B as Eleanor: On the 1920 campaign train, ever-perceptive Louie Howe showed me how to help FDR’s career, how to increase women’s political awareness.  I marveled at Louis Howe’s devotion.  From 1920 onward I sat at his feet, followed his suggestions, learned from him how to speak, write, and serve.

Frank:  Name activist women’s organizations you joined and the activist women leaders you befriended.

B as Eleanor: I was active in the Women’s NYC Club, League of Women Voters, Women’s Division of the NY State Democratic Committee, Consumers League, Junior League, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.  I grew especially close to political activists Nancy Cook (1884-1962) and her life partner Marion Dickerman (1890-1983).

Frank:  At Nancy and Marion’s Greenwich Village home you met and learned much from avant-gard writers, painters, poets, musicians.

B as Eleanor:  We three lived together at the Val-Kill cottage  which FDR in 1926 had built for us in the woods away from Hyde Park.  We started a Val-Kill furniture factory employing local craftspeople.  Nancy and I taught at, and Marion was Dean of NYC’s Todhunter Girls School. 13 I loved teaching.

Frank: In 1924 by chairing the National Democratic Women’s Platform Committee, you greatly advanced women’s political influence.  You also backed Democrat Al Smith running for NY State Governor against Republican Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. (1887-1944), TR’s son,14 your first cousin. You created a stir driving your small car topped with a paper-maiche teapot belching smoke.  Explain.

B as Eleanor:  I wanted to remind voters of Republican Teapot Dome Oil Scandal during the Harding administration, when Republican officials were bribed to let private oil companies profit illegally selling U.S. Navy oil  reserves.15

Frank: Now to 1932: What were your goals on becoming First Lady in the White House?

B as Eleanor: I was 49, determined to continue active public service and to advance the goals Franklin and I shared.  Ours was a lively White House with family, guests, live-in assistants (Missy, Louie Howe, servants, others), ongoing activities without end.  ¶To ease the Great Depression FDR needed me to be his eyes and ears.  I was always on the go.

Frank:  FDR’s big November 1932 victory brought elation, hope, optimism, promise of better days.  Remember FDR’s uplifting campaign song?  How did it go? 15

Happy days are here again.  The skies above are clear again.  So, Let’s sing a song of cheer again.   Happy days are here again.

Frank:  And what song came out of the Hoover Depression?  “Brother, can you Spare a Dime?”

B as Eleanor:  Back to Pres. FDR, March 4, 1933: he swung into action; closed all banks to check their solvency; reopened sound ones quickly.  In his first radio fireside chat he told listeners: your money is safer in a guaranteed bank than under the mattress.  Congress, called into special session, in a hundred days, passed his barrage of 15 New Deal bills.  Jobs multiplied.  Confidence soared.

Frank:  Eleanor, your biographer, Doris Kearns Goodwin, wrote that you  were the  first White House First Lady to: hold regular press conferences, first to write a syndicated [“My Day”] newspaper column, first to give sponsored radio broadcasts, first to annually earn more than her husband’s presidential salary—and give it to charity, first on a lecture circuit; first to testify before congressional committees on needed reforms.  ¶In WW II after visiting U.S. troops in England and in the South Pacific, you urged FDR to create the G.I. Bill for returned veterans.16  Please comment.

B as Eleanor:  I started press conference for women reporters only because I wanted more women reporters hired, paid and respected equally with men.

Frank: The idea came from…?

B as Eleanor: Prize winning Associated Press reporter Lorena Hickok (1893-1968), who covered me in the 1928 and 1932 campaigns.  We became intimate friends.  Louie Howe helped me plan the news conference.15

 

Frank:  How did FDR and his advisors react to your press conferences?

B as Eleanor:  They encouraged them, sometimes used them to test opinion on New Deal programs.  If criticized, I drew fire.  FDR could then correct his plan to avoid trouble.  He’d laugh and say:  My Missus does what she wants, says what she wants, goes where she wants.

Frank:: You got many qualified women into top positions, such as  Frances Perkins (1882-1965).  In 1933 you urged FDR to appoint Perkins Labor Secretary, the first woman cabinet officer in history.  She created the 1935 Social Security Act.

B as Eleanor:  Frances Perkins worked for FDR when he was governor, 1929-33, and admired his zeal in fighting the Great Depression.  She was his chief cabinet ally throughout his 12 year presidency.

Frank:  You also initiated the National Youth Administration, 1935.  Why?

B as Eleanor: I wanted work-study funds for 18 to 25 year old high school and college students.  The CCCs took care of many of the over 25 year old jobless.

Frank:  You championed the rights of African Americans, who 60 years after slavery ended were still discriminated against.

B as Eleanor:  I also urged including African Americans in all New Deal programs, including the Homestead communities, the National Youth Administration, Civilian Conservation Corps, others.  Majority prejudice stymied my efforts.

Frank:  You hosted at the White House gatherings of African American leaders, including Walter Francis White (1893-1955), A. Phillip Randolph (1889-1979), and others.  They later led the 1950s and ’60s civil rights movement.  You pushed for anti-lynching legislation which failed, voted down by Southern Democrats who chaired powerful congressional committees.

B as Eleanor:  I proudly attended the 1938 interracial Birmingham conference on race relations, was told not to break the Alabama law about separate white/black seating.

Frank:  But your presence shouted loud and clear that segregation was wrong.

B as Eleanor:  I intervened when African American singer Marian Anderson (1902-93) was denied because of her race the right to perform at the Daughters of the American Revolution’s Constitution Hall, Washington, D.C.

Frank:  You publicly resigned your DAR membership; arranged for Marian Anderson to sing instead on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.  ¶You started the Homestead movement, first in Arthurdale, W.VA., for out-of-work coal miners; the second Homestead community was here in nearby Crossville, TN.  About 100 of these subsistence communities were formed in the U.S. to relieve poverty. ¶Describe your greatest  disappointments.

B as Eleanor:  That Social Security  omitted self employed farm workers, home makers, domestic workers, others not on a payroll; that universal health care was stymied by powerful medical/drug interests; that the State Department blocked efforts to save Jewish refugees, especially children.

Frank:  You helped FDR win his unprecedented third term at the 1940 Democratic National Convention.  Explain.

B as Eleanor: A third term in 1940 was then legal but without precedent.  FDR, as was the custom, did not attend the convention but remained at Hyde Park.   The problem was that he had not declared his own candidacy.  Other presidential contenders divided Democratic ranks.  The convention was in an uproar of indecision.

Frank:  From the convention Frances Perkins phoned you, Eleanor, saying: unless you come right away and say the right thing, another presidential candidate will be chosen.  On the plane to Chicago, you Eleanor, wondered what to say.

B as Eleanor:  I said, “This is no ordinary time.”  Europe is at war,  Hitler is winning, the U.S. is bound to become involved.  Our country needs FDR’s continuing firm leadership.

Frank: That was enough for a unanimous FDR re-nomination.   You got FDR his third term. ¶Then, on your own, after FDR’s death, Pres. Harry S Truman appointed you to the United Nations.  You chaired the contentious UN subcommittee that in 1948 completed the landmark “Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”  Explain.

B as Eleanor:  That Declaration stands as a moral document to benefit all mankind.  Working with the Soviet diehards during Cold War tensions required all the skills I could muster: patience, careful analysis of issues, sensitivity to cultural differences, awareness of language nuances.  I continued at the U.N. until 1953 when Eisenhower became president.  Then I volunteered to travel and serve through the American Association for the United Nations, to assure my husband’s legacy as a founder of the United Nations.

Frank:  My quick key ending questions/answers: ¶Your influence on FDR?  You were his rudder urging his help for people in trouble when they could not help themselves.  ¶Your estranged marriage?  FDR, spoiled by his mother, needed adoring ladies.  ¶Why you each remained political partners?  He needed your liberal guiding conscience; you needed his political power.  ¶How you both changed history, and in what direction?  You enlarged the middle class, created a safety net for U.S. workers, helped save the world from Hitlerism, kept U.S. free enterprise alive, made U.S. government more responsible for needy people.  ¶But let’s ask Eleanor herself:  what was your influence on FDR?

B as Eleanor:  I was the irritating liberal spur under his political saddle.  I insisted that he do more and more to advance human rights and well being.  He expected me to goad him.  He kept a basket beside his bed for my notes, requests, suggestions.  I was the conscience he wanted, needed, to fuel his political power to do good.  ¶Family connections, 5 children, 31 grandchildren, 40 years of marriage tied us together.  ¶When our 3rd-born died in infancy, when my only surviving brother died, FDR hugged me.  There were affectionate moments.  Deep down we needed and loved each other.

Frank:  Good job well done.   Rest well next to FDR.

Both together: Thank you so much for being here.

END with Footnotes, Books, Other References below_______________________

Footnotes:

1We hope to make both FDR and ER papers accessible on the internet.   Search google.com or bing.com or any search engine under Franklin Parker, 1921-or bfparker, adding:  Eleanor Roosevelt (1864-1962) and/or Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1962-1945).

2U.S. senators now directly elected by state voters were then (1910-13) chosen by state legislatures.  FDR led an opposition against Tammany Hall’s choice (a Tammany Hall lackey) and for a better choice.

3Woodrow Wilson, 1856-1924; 28th U.S President during 1913-21.

4“Brain Trust Professors :” Raymond Moley, Columbia University political scientist, city reformer, concerned with “anarchy of concentrated economic power.”  Adolf Berle, Columbia U., considered a prodigy while at Harvard, excellent in law and economics.  Rexford Tugwell, Columbia U. economist.  Other close FDR advisors: Felix Frankfurter, Harvard Law School, for economic decentralization, fair play through banking and securities regulations; close advisor Louie Howe.  See Burns book below, Crosswinds of Freedom, pp. 13-14.

5No previous major power world leader comes to mind who had FDR’s physical handicap.

6Critics (and there were many) said then and since that FDR and ER misused their power to socialize the USA and that FDR at Yalta, by not standing up to Stalin, lost Eastern Europe to Communism and brought on the US-USSR Cold War.  Most historians believe that it would have taken WW III to oust Soviet troops from Eastern Europe, that FDR, advised that it would cost millions in lost lives and treasure to invade Japan, needed and got Stalin’s aid in defeating Japan.

7Third-born Franklin, Jr. died in infancy (1909-09), with the same name given to fourth-born, 1914-88).

8A bereft Eleanor often brooded alone over FDR’s marital betrayal with Lucy Mercer in Washington, D.C.’s Rock Creek Cemetery, gazing at the landmark hooded woman’s statue named “Grief,” sculpted by Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907), on the grave of the suicide wife (Marian “Clover” Hooker Adams’ (1843-85) of Henry Brooks Adams (1838-1918). Did Eleanor contemplate suicide?  See under books below Cook, Vol. 1, pp. 235-236, 248, 280, 428, 492.

9For Louie Howe’s influence on the Roosevelts, see under Books below: Fenster, Julie M.

10 Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919, 26th U.S. President during 1901-09.

11Aunty Bye, also called “Bamie,” was Anna Roosevelt Cowles (1855-1931).  See under Books below:  Collier, p. 35.

12Protecting with secrecy his elderly father’s heart attacks reinforced FDR’s later secrecy.

13For Eleanor intimates Nancy Cook and Marion Dikerman, see: http://usasearch.gov/search?affiliate=nps&v%3Aproject=firstgov&input-form=advanced-firstgov&query=nancy+cook&buttonName=go&query-quote=

14Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. (1887-1944), President TR’s oldest son, succeeded FDR as Assistant U.S. Navy Secretary, 1921, under Republican Pres. Warren G. Harding, during the transfer of oil leases from the Navy to private oil companies but was not involved in Teapot Dome Scandal bribes.  For TR, Jr.-FDR rivalry, see: http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&=&q=FDR-Theodore+Roosevelt%2C+Jr.+rivalry&btnG=Google+Search

15Teapot Dome Scandal, Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall (1861-1944), See under Books below: Finer and  Garraty, Eds.,  p. 1062.

16For FDR’s four presidential and other election campaigns, see Israel, Fred L. Student’s Atlas of American Presidential Elections, 1789 to 1996. Washington, DC:  Congressional Quarterly, 1997, p. 111 plus index on FDR.  Also Rosenboom, Eugene H., and Alfred E. Eckes, Jr., A History of Presidential Elections From George Washington to Jimmy Carter, Fourth Edition.  NY: Macmillan, 1979 (Chapters X-XIII plus index on FDR).

17On Eleanor’s contributions, see under Books Goodwin, p., 617.

18Under Books below see Fenster.

Note: Eleanor Roosevelt’s  three important men intimates, not mentioned in text above for lack of speaking time, were:  NY State Trooper Earl Miller (), Joseph Lash (1909-87), and David Gurewitsch  (1902-74).  See descriptions under their names in google.com or bing.com or other search engine.

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962): Best Online Sources, Easy access, quick read:

http://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/abouteleanor/

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eleanor/filmmore/transcript/index.html

http://www.firstladies.org/biographies/firstladies.aspx?biography=33

For Time Magazine free access to FDR, ER, related topics: www.time.com/archives

The following mentions ER and FDR in all Wikipedia articles:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&ns0=1&redirs=1&advanced=1&search=Eleanor+Roosevelt&limit=500&offset=20

Eleanor Roosevelt  and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Best Books On:

Note:  Over 8.5 million entries under: Eleanor Roosevelt (1864-1962), Books By and About, in: http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&=&q=Eleanor+Roosevelt%2C+books+by+and+about+&btnG=Google+Search

Black, Conrad.  Franklin D. Roosevelt, Champion of Freedom, 2003.  Canadian author describes how FDR convinced Americans to struggle to win WW II in order to preserve liberty and democracy.  Depicts FDR as a man of strength and vision.

Brands, H.W. Traitor to His Class:  The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 2008.  University of Texas historian traces FDR’s New Deal legislation intended to save the American political economy; describes his forceful, cagey WWII leadership; and depicts his role in creating the postwar international order.

Burns, James MacGregor. Crosswinds of Freedom.  NY:  Alfred A. Knopf, 1989.  See index for Roosevelts and related topics.

Burns, James MacGregor.  Roosevelt:  The Lion and the Fox 1882-1940, 1956. Williams College political scientist, first of two respected FDR books, depicts FDR as Machiavellian; both a wily fox and a tenacious lion.  Using original sources, personal recollections of those who knew and worked with FDR, as he did himself, author   describes FDR’s weaknesses and deficiencies, but concludes that FDR had: “…courage, joyousness, responsiveness, vitality, faith, and above all, concern for his fellow man.”

Burns, James MacGregor.  Roosevelt: Soldier of Freedom 1940-1945, 1970.  Sequel to the above, covers FDR as World War II president.

Collier, Peter, with David Horowitz, The Roosevelts: An American Saga. NY: Simon &Schuster, 1994.  Excellent family background, both the Republican Oyster Bay L.I., NY TR Roosevelts, the Democrat Hyde Park, NY (FDR) Roosevelts, their interconnections, and intimates.

Cook, Blanche Wiesen.  Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume One 1884-1933.  NY: Viking, 1992.  Volume Two: The Defining Years 1933-38.  NY: Penguin, 1999.

Fenster, Julie M. FDR’s Shadow: Louis Howe, The Force That Shaped Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.  2009.  Intimate account of how newspaperman and political guru got

FDR into the White House.

Freedman, Russell.  Eleanor Roosevelt, A Life of Discovery.  NY: Clarion Books, 1993, p. 145.

Freidel, Frank Burt.  Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Rendezvous with Destiny.  Excellent account of FDR’s early years and struggle with polio.

Goodwin, Doris Kearns.  No Ordinary Time:  Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.  The Home Front in World War II, 1994,  Goodwin shows how FDR led the U.S to victory and how Eleanor championed social justice for African Americans and became a role model in the changing role of women.  Asserts that FDR made the fewest mistakes of any World War II leader.

Larrabee, Eric.  Commander in Chief:  Franklin Delano Roosevelt, His Lieutenants, and Their War.  Profiles all major WWII commanders, tells of FDR’s skill in choosing them (sometimes from obscurity), and explains many of FDR remarkably skilled strategic decisions.

Leuchtenburg, William Edward.  Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932-1940.  The New Deal created the Securities and Exchange Commission for safer financial markets, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to end bank panics, Social Security, unemployment insurance, Federal Reserve Board, rural electricity, Federal Home Agency (created modern mortgages), Fair Labor Standards Act, and the Civilian Conservation Corps, Wagner Act, farm supports, and GI Bill.”

Rauchway, Eric.  The Great Depression and the New Deal:  A Very Short Introduction.  A highly regarded history of the Great Depression and the New Deal.

Rowley, Hazel.  Franklin and Eleanor.  Highly readable recent account by a British-born author who regarded the Roosevelt marriage as mainly a happy one with both free to enjoy their roles and to lead separate lives.

Smith, Jean Edward.  FDR.  2007.  Meticulous re-interpretation of FDR’s life and accomplishments.  Much on Roosevelt’s personal life.  Smith admires FDR, criticizes his failings,  conveys the great significance of Roosevelt’s career.

Ward, Geoffrey C.  A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt, 1989.  Oliver Wendell Holmes said that FDR had a second class intellect but a first-class temperament.  Sequel to author’s Young Franklin Roosevelt 1882-1905.  Covers  FDR’s rapid rise, 1905-1928, New York State Senator, Navy Secretary, Lucy Mercer love affair, 1920 vice presidential candidate on the losing Democratic ticket, crippling polio, New York State Governor.

End.  Corrections, comments to:  bfparker@frontiernet.net

Posted by bfparker@frontiernet.net in 15:57:49 | Permalink | Comments Off

Monday, October 31, 2011

Franklin and Betty J. Parker Funny Skit on Their Birthdays and 61st Wedding Anniversary, June 4, 2011, bfparker@frontiernet.net

Franklin and Betty J. Parker Funny Skit on Their Birthdays and 61st Wedding Anniversary, June 4, 2011, Uplands Retirement Village, Pleasant Hill, TN  bfparker@frontiernet.net

 

PEGGY HAPPY:  Master of Ceremonies Introduction

 

 Friends and neighbors, lend me your ears.     

Hello, hello, here we go.

 

Here’s a 2-person skit to set the scene.

 We’ll try our best to keep it clean.

 

A grey haired couple is what it’s about

 Love and marriage is something to shout.

 

 61 years married and isn’t it sweet.

 They must get ready for a neighborhood meet.

 

Betty is anxious that they be on time.

Frank’s in his skivvies (underwear),

calm and sublime,

Tinkering with a computer long in decline.

 

Betty fusses and fumes,

About 61 years of ups and “dooons.”

 

She grouches and groans,

And makes many sounds.

 

With that, my friends,

 They begin at last.

 

I step aside

 And let them blast.

 

[loud argument in progress]

 

BETTY:  Stop fiddling with that computer.  You’re always tinkering, tinkering, never on time; never listen, your mind is a million miles away.  Quit Now, quit.  Get ready.  We have to be on time for our neighborhood party.

 

FRANK: Just a minute, just a minute.  I think I can get this old computer going with the Conflict Catcher.  How do you put the Conflict Catcher on?  How does this darn thing work?

 

BETTY:  Dummy! The Conflict Catcher is in the upper right corner of the screen.  Click on it.  Hurry.  Get it over with.   Get ready to go, now!  Talk about conflict:  You’re always in conflict, going in the wrong direction, doing the wrong thing.  Now get ready.  We have to go.

 

FRANK:  I’m clicking, I’m clicking.  It’s slow.  This darn computer is 13 years old.  We’ve kept it going all this time.

 

BETTY:  You and the computer are both slow all right.  You’re always doing the odd-ball thing.  You try to do two things at once.  You can’t burn your candle at both ends.

 

FRANK:  Hey, that’s rich—burn your candle at both ends—there’s a short, funny poem about that by Edna St. Vincent Millay:  It goes: “My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends–It gives such lovely light!”  ¶Ha!  Don’t you love it?   Don’t you just love it?

 

BETTY:  [Exasperated}:  Ach!  GRRR!.  That’s just like you, bird brain—quoting poetry  when we are rushing  to get ready for a party, our party, our very own birthdays and anniversary party, given out of the goodness of her heart by our wonderful neighbor, Peggy Happy.  Now, you get ready and I mean it or I’ll give you what for.  Hear me?  Get going.  Move!  Move!

 

FRANK:  O.K., Kiddo.  I hear your “Orders from Headquarters.”  I’m almost through fiddlng with the computer.  You go ahead.  Put on your girdle so the fat doesn’t show.

 

BETTY:  Don’t you dare say that again, nitwit.  I’m not fat.  Some of my weight has shifted to my tummy.  What about your hair?  Got any?

 

FRANK:  Gone with the Wind.  I don’t want to fight.  Birthdays, Anniversary; time to remember how sweet you were and are.  You know, Babes, we came here to Uplands 17 years ago, bought this computer 13 years ago, did a lot of work with it and on it, together.

 

BETTY:  I know.  Move.  Get dressed.  No time for day dreaming.

 

FRANK:  We wrote lots of articles, got lots of e-mails, did that whole revision of our 1971 George Peabody, A Biography,  book; remember,  the update for the 200th anniversary of George Peabody’s birth, 1795-1995.  Big job but we did it on this old computer.  You and me.  Olden times.  Memory lane.  Remember?

 

BETTY:  I’ve got my girdle on.  Stop day dreaming  Put on your good pants.  Make sure the zipper is up.  Don’t embarrass me more than you have to.  Act your age. ¶Yes, I remember the George Peabody revised book.  You drove me wacky with that and with hundreds of other projects.  Remember, you’re an old man of 90.

 

FRANK:  When I look back, I feel young.  I remember your hollering over every scratch on the furniture, every dent on the car, every spot on the carpet.  But best of all I remember when you were sweet 17.

 

BETTY:  Don’t bring that up,  there isn’t time.  But I do remember, I do.

 

FRANK:  Babes, we must have arrived on the same train that early September in 1946 for registration day at Berea College, near Lexington, KY,  you from Decatur, Ala; me from Asheville, NC.  I first saw you standing in the chow line.   You wore blue jeans, tight blue jeans.  I couldn’t take my eyes off you.  You looked round all over.

 

BETTY:  What do you mean “round all over”?  You always tell that story and people give it a sexual connotation.  Behave yourself.  The blue jeans happened to be too short and tight and I was only 17 and maybe still had some baby fat.  Don’t you dare tell that story again.  I saw you too that day in the food line.  You had your nose stuck in a book.  Everyone else was standing around, talking, getting acquainted, but you were as usual out of this world.  Just like now, not knowing whether you are coming or going, and never on time.

 

FRANK:.  Yeah, well…I remember we had some nice classes together.  Some teachers seated us alphabetically, Franklin Parker next to Betty June Parker.  Not related, same last name, that’s how we met; pure coincidence.

 

BETTY:  Don’t remind me.  You were never on time for class, never ready, always had to borrow pencil, pen, paper.  Always forgetful, then, since, and now.

 

FRANK:  Something clicked; we got together, met oftener and oftener, walked a lot together.  I don’t remember who began holding hands first, you or me, or  who first stopped under the kissing tree near your dorm?  [she hits him with newspaper]

 

BETTY:  I told you not to remind me.  You were always difficult, always mixed up.  I was embarrassed.  Some people thought we were related, cousins you know, and wondered why we were hand holding and maybe kissing cousins.  You were always a flirt, then and since.

 

FRANK:  I didn’t know Joline was your roommate when I first talked to her.  She didn’t know you and I had met.  I heard that she told you that she had met the nicest boy, me, and that you dismissed mention of me by blurting out to her: “That Old Man!”

 

BETTY:  Listen, odd-ball.  I worked in the Labor Office, looked up your records, saw that you were 25, had been in the in Air Force four years, 1942-46.  I was 17 and didn’t want the world to know I was holding hands with an old man.  Eight years age difference then was a big difference.

 

FRANK:  Then what happened?  Why did we click?  How come we married?

 

BETTY:  You persisted.  You wouldn’t give up.  You sent me daily love notes in my mail box, kept holding hands, kept going with me to prayer group and choir practice, sometimes handing me a nice flower you illegally picked when no one was looking. 

 

FRANK:  You’re always making me out to be worse than I was.

 

BETTY:  I still remember the one-glass-5-cent-coca-cola you bought with two straws, no ice, and told me to sip, slowly, after you, to make it last.  Cheap skate.  I tried to break it off.  You kept coming back.   What was I to do?  [Sudden shift of mood]. 

 

FRANK:  [mock whimper] You make me want to cry.  Boo hoo hoo.

 

BETTY:  Don’t look so sad.  Don’t cry.  You weren’t so bad.  Matter of fact, you were a bit of a sweetie.  Don’t let it go to your head.  There’s room for improvement.

 

FRANK:  I remember how sweet you were, lovely, nice to be with, but always very proper.  I remember how shocked I was that day early in our going together–you told me flat out:  “Frank, if our being together isn’t going to lead anywhere, then good-bye.”  I was shocked, shocked; scared, scared; having fun was one thing.  But this Betty girl meant business. 

 

BETTY  (shouts) :  You bet I did.  And what did you do about it?

 

FRANK:  Before the day ended I crawled back.  I asked:  Where can I find a diamond engagement ring cheap, cheap?

 

BETTY:  Cheap skate!  And I asked:  Does that mean you are going to fall on your knees and ask for my hand in marriage?

 

FRANK:  I said, no; it means let your folks eyeball me; my folks eyeball you.  If that doesn’t throw them into a fit, we might make it.  You prepare your Daddy. I’ll speak to him man to man.  If he has no objection and I can find an engagement ring at a Jewelry Store that is having a fire sale, I’ll buy it, and propose.  If you accept, we’ll set the date—I’ll bite the bullet, even if it kills me.   I’ll do it.  [sobs]   I’ll give up my freedom.  Gone with the wind, just like my hair.

 

BETTY:  I think you also said: let’s shift gears.   Or was it: let’s get this plane off the ground?  Or was it: There goes my freedom.  Or was it: Having a wife means work and strife.

 

FRANK: Remember, before I got the engagement ring I surprised you by winning for you a nice ladies’ wrist watch; remember?

 

BETTY:  Yes, back then you were always trying to win something in stupid contests:  Send in the answer to the following question in 25 words or less and win a prize.

 

FRANK:  I remember, Babes.  It was:  “Contaflex watches are good for rough country living because….”  In 25 words or less.

 

BETTY:  You sent in one entry in your name, one in my name and never told me about it.

 

FRANK:  My entry lost, your entry won.  Lucky you.  I thought giving you that win-win Contaflex watch might hold you until I could rub two nickles together and find a proper engagement ring at a Jewelry store fire sale.

 

BETTY:  Then you invited yourself to my parents’ home, which scared me to death.  The first beau ever to want to be looked over as a possible suitor.  I knew it had to be done, yet it worried me.

 

 FRANK:  About your father: I did get a shock the day I spoke to him man to man.  The night before in a corner of the room I slept in was his shotgun.  I didn’t sleep a wink worrying what that shotgun was doing there.  I didn’t know he normally kept his squirrel gun there.   But your Dad was gracious.  He said:  “Son, remember, come back to visit anytime.  When you marry we will remove Betty’s plate from the table; but don’t expect us to add your two places to our table permanently.  ¶I got his drift right away: he was saying:  Get a job, make a living, build a love nest of your own.  Don’t be a bum.

 

BETTY:  [Laughs, Ha!]:  Yes, but after the wedding my Dad and Mum took from their kitchen drawers every thing they didn’t need, give it to us to help start our housekeeping. 

 

FRANK:  We found our first teaching jobs through the Berea College Alumni Office.  The president of Ferrum Jr. College near Roanoke, VA, wanted to hire Berea graduates who wouldn’t expect much pay.  We applied, were married June 12, 1950, and on our honeymoon went by train to be interviewed. 

 

BETTY:  We spent the first four nights in hotels.  When we reached Ferrum, VA, we reported to President Nathaniel H. Davis.  He took us to Nurse Bulifont, an old fashioned strait laced nurse who put us in separate rooms in the student infirmary, separate rooms, mind you.   What a honeymoon:  four night in hotels, fifth night in separate rooms in a college hospital infirmary.

 

FRANK:  That night alone in bed I heard a soft knock on the door. Was it nurse Bulifont?  No.  Was it Pres. Nathaniel H. Davis?  No.  It was you, asking timidly, “May I come?  I’m scared.  May I stay with you tonight and slip back to my own room early tomorrow?”  I said: “Ya, Ya” What fun.  Yippitty do dah, Yippitti day. 

 

BETTY:  Remember 40 years later on your last teaching job at Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, N.C. just before we came to Uplands?  We walked a lot on campus holding hands, past the dining room and the Tower, a student hangout.  Remember several times some girl students came up to us, said they enjoyed seeing us often walking hand in hand on campus.  Made us feel good. 

 

FRANK:  We’ve walk a lot holding hands here at Uplands, often past the Village Market arm in arm, in all kinds of weather.  Remember that bearded salty old timer who must have seen us often, seated in his pickup truck.  He put his head out the window and asked you good naturedly, “Hey, there.  Is he holding you up or are you holding him up?”  We laughed.  You, BETTY replied, “We’re holding each other up!”  He and we all laughed as we went on our way.

 

BETTY:  Well, Doll, all in all you are not so bad.  In fact, you’re pretty good.  Thanks for the memories.  Hurry now and get ready for the big party.

 

 FRANK:  (softly, lovingly). OK.  After a quick hug and a little whirl around the room.  [They stand, hug, do a little jig, kiss, while …]

 

PEGGY HAPPY:  [at mike says loudly]:   D, d, d, dats all, folks.   End of skit.  End of Betty  and Franklin Parker’s “A trip Down Memory Lane.”

 

 Peggy Happy:  The Parkers last fling is their parody of “Do You Love Me?”  From Fiddler On the Roof.  [Loud, clear, rapid fire, sing song tune]

 

FRANK:  It’s a new world, Betty.  A new world.  Young people are falling in love.  I ask you, Betty, Do you love me?

 

BETTY:  Do I what?

 

FRANK:  Do you love me?

 

BETTY:  Do I love you?    With young people getting married.  And there’s trouble in the town.   You’re upset, you’re worn out.  Go inside, go lie down!  Maybe it’s indigestion.

 

FRANK:  “Betty,  I’m asking you a question…”  Do you love me?

 

BETTY:  You’re a fool

 

FRANK:  “I know…” But do you love me?

 

BETTY:  Do I love you?  For 61 years I’ve washed your clothes,  Cooked your meals, cleaned your house, Given you joy, milked the cow.  After 61 years, why talk about love right now?

 

FRANK:  Betty, The first time we met at Berea College I liked you, but I was scared.

 

BETTY:  I was shy.

 

FRANK:  I was nervous.

 

BETTY:  So was I.

 

FRANK:   But our hearts said we’d learn to love each other.   And now I’m asking, Betty,  Do you love me?

 

BETTY:  I’m your wife!

 

FRANK:  “I know…”  But do you love me?

 

BETTY:  Do I love him?   For 61 years I’ve lived with him, Fought with him, starved with him.  For 61 years my bed is his.  If that’s not love, what is?

 

FRANK:  Then you do, you do, love me?

 

BETTY:  I suppose I do.

 

FRANK:  And I suppose I love you too!

 

[Both sing together]

 

It doesn’t change a thing

 But even so

 

After 61 years   

 Love, It’s so nice to know.     [they shake hands, whirl around, kiss]

 

PEGGY HAPPY:  END of “Do You Love Me,” parody from Fidler on the Roof.  A big hand to the little love birds.  [applause].  Next to last on the program is…the Parker’s last “Thank you:”

 

FRANK:  Before we say Goodbye–

Thank you each

So very much.

Our Hearts you did touch.

 

We thank key people here

Who are so very dear.

 

Let’s applaud them at the end

Before we homeward tend.

 

BETTY:  Thanks to Jeri Abbott and Quessie Krell

 Heritage pals,

 Always helpful

 Always do well.

 

FRANK:  Thanks Jackie Dwenger

For food and support

 You are the most helpful sort.

 

 

 

BETTY: Thanks Al Dwenger

 Our Great town mayor

 Who made our skit so much better.

 

FRANK:  Thanks Paul Happy

 He  previewed our skit

 And made it more snappy.

 

BETTY: Thank you, Gerri Mize

 Who came from so far

 Florida to England to Pleasant Hill

 Having you here is such a great thrill.

 

FRANK:  Thanks to the Webers, Jo Ann and George

From Sparta and Bon Air

 You’re here we know

 Because you care.

 

BETTY: Thanks to three nieces

Emily Hayden, Massachusetts

 Diana Glass and Micki Beerman,

New York City

 

Three precious dears

 Who are without peers.

 

FRANK:  Thanks for grand music

 That lifted us so high

 From Emily and Dan Byrens

And our Kate Smith singer,

Brenda Fry.

 

BETTY: Thanks to Fran and Robin Markham

For making  the DVD

 A treasure that

 We will forever see.

 

FRANK:  Thanks to Peggy Happy

Who thought it all up

Took an old house with a big old tree

 Made it a paradise for all to see

 

Took us two under her wing

Gave us joy and eternal Spring. [Great applause] 

 

_________________________________________________________

 

PEGGY HAPPY:  Thanks for coming

 That’s all I can say.

 Your presence made this

 Our greatest Day.  

 

Love to A L L. 

 We’ve had a B A L L.

 

End of Skit.  Thanks for reading it. 

 

To access our other writings enter in google.com or bing.com or any other search engine:  Franklin Parker, or Franklin and Betty J. Parker, or Franklin Parker and Betty J. Parker, or bfparker.

 

For the titles of 275 of our published works in the Library of Congress, access:

 

http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=Franklin+Parker%2C+1921-&qt=results_page

 

Contact:  bfparker@frontiernet.net

Posted by bfparker@frontiernet.net in 04:59:21 | Permalink | Comments Off

Monday, June 20, 2011

Franklin and Betty J. Parker Funny Skit on Their Birthdays and 61st Wedding Anniversary, June 4, 2011, Uplands Retirement Village, Pleasant Hill, TN

Franklin and Betty J. Parker Funny Skit on Their Birthdays and 61st Wedding Anniversary, June 4, 2011, Uplands Retirement Village, Pleasant Hill, TN  bfparker@frontiernet.net

 

PEGGY HAPPY:  Master of Ceremonies Introduction

 

 Friends and neighbors, lend me your ears.     

Hello, hello, here we go.

 

Here’s a 2-person skit to set the scene.

 We’ll try our best to keep it clean.

 

A grey haired couple is what it’s about

 Love and marriage is something to shout.

 

 61 years married and isn’t it sweet.

 They must get ready for a neighborhood meet.

 

Betty is anxious that they be on time.

Frank’s in his skivvies (underwear),

calm and sublime,

Tinkering with a computer long in decline.

 

Betty fusses and fumes,

About 61 years of ups and “dooons.”

 

She grouches and groans,

And makes many sounds.

 

With that, my friends,

 They begin at last.

 

I step aside

 And let them blast.

 

[loud argument in progress]

 

BETTY:  Stop fiddling with that computer.  You’re always tinkering, tinkering, never on time; never listen, your mind is a million miles away.  Quit Now, quit.  Get ready.  We have to be on time for our neighborhood party.

 

FRANK: Just a minute, just a minute.  I think I can get this old computer going with the Conflict Catcher.  How do you put the Conflict Catcher on?  How does this darn thing work?

 

BETTY:  Dummy! The Conflict Catcher is in the upper right corner of the screen.  Click on it.  Hurry.  Get it over with.   Get ready to go, now!  Talk about conflict:  You’re always in conflict, going in the wrong direction, doing the wrong thing.  Now get ready.  We have to go.

 

FRANK:  I’m clicking, I’m clicking.  It’s slow.  This darn computer is 13 years old.  We’ve kept it going all this time.

 

BETTY:  You and the computer are both slow all right.  You’re always doing the odd-ball thing.  You try to do two things at once.  You can’t burn your candle at both ends.

 

FRANK:  Hey, that’s rich—burn your candle at both ends—there’s a short, funny poem about that by Edna St. Vincent Millay:  It goes: “My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends–It gives such lovely light!”  ¶Ha!  Don’t you love it?   Don’t you just love it?

 

BETTY:  [Exasperated}:  Ach!  GRRR!.  That’s just like you, bird brain—quoting poetry  when we are rushing  to get ready for a party, our party, our very own birthdays and anniversary party, given out of the goodness of her heart by our wonderful neighbor, Peggy Happy.  Now, you get ready and I mean it or I’ll give you what for.  Hear me?  Get going.  Move!  Move!

 

FRANK:  O.K., Kiddo.  I hear your “Orders from Headquarters.”  I’m almost through fiddlng with the computer.  You go ahead.  Put on your girdle so the fat doesn’t show.

 

BETTY:  Don’t you dare say that again, nitwit.  I’m not fat.  Some of my weight has shifted to my tummy.  What about your hair?  Got any?

 

FRANK:  Gone with the Wind.  I don’t want to fight.  Birthdays, Anniversary; time to remember how sweet you were and are.  You know, Babes, we came here to Uplands 17 years ago, bought this computer 13 years ago, did a lot of work with it and on it, together.

 

BETTY:  I know.  Move.  Get dressed.  No time for day dreaming.

 

FRANK:  We wrote lots of articles, got lots of e-mails, did that whole revision of our 1971 George Peabody, A Biography,  book; remember,  the update for the 200th anniversary of George Peabody’s birth, 1795-1995.  Big job but we did it on this old computer.  You and me.  Olden times.  Memory lane.  Remember?

 

BETTY:  I’ve got my girdle on.  Stop day dreaming  Put on your good pants.  Make sure the zipper is up.  Don’t embarrass me more than you have to.  Act your age. ¶Yes, I remember the George Peabody revised book.  You drove me wacky with that and with hundreds of other projects.  Remember, you’re an old man of 90.

 

FRANK:  When I look back, I feel young.  I remember your hollering over every scratch on the furniture, every dent on the car, every spot on the carpet.  But best of all I remember when you were sweet 17.

 

BETTY:  Don’t bring that up,  there isn’t time.  But I do remember, I do.

 

FRANK:  Babes, we must have arrived on the same train that early September in 1946 for registration day at Berea College, near Lexington, KY,  you from Decatur, Ala; me from Asheville, NC.  I first saw you standing in the chow line.   You wore blue jeans, tight blue jeans.  I couldn’t take my eyes off you.  You looked round all over.

 

BETTY:  What do you mean “round all over”?  You always tell that story and people give it a sexual connotation.  Behave yourself.  The blue jeans happened to be too short and tight and I was only 17 and maybe still had some baby fat.  Don’t you dare tell that story again.  I saw you too that day in the food line.  You had your nose stuck in a book.  Everyone else was standing around, talking, getting acquainted, but you were as usual out of this world.  Just like now, not knowing whether you are coming or going, and never on time.

 

FRANK:.  Yeah, well…I remember we had some nice classes together.  Some teachers seated us alphabetically, Franklin Parker next to Betty June Parker.  Not related, same last name, that’s how we met; pure coincidence.

 

BETTY:  Don’t remind me.  You were never on time for class, never ready, always had to borrow pencil, pen, paper.  Always forgetful, then, since, and now.

 

FRANK:  Something clicked; we got together, met oftener and oftener, walked a lot together.  I don’t remember who began holding hands first, you or me, or  who first stopped under the kissing tree near your dorm?  [she hits him with newspaper]

 

BETTY:  I told you not to remind me.  You were always difficult, always mixed up.  I was embarrassed.  Some people thought we were related, cousins you know, and wondered why we were hand holding and maybe kissing cousins.  You were always a flirt, then and since.

 

FRANK:  I didn’t know Joline was your roommate when I first talked to her.  She didn’t know you and I had met.  I heard that she told you that she had met the nicest boy, me, and that you dismissed mention of me by blurting out to her: “That Old Man!”

 

BETTY:  Listen, odd-ball.  I worked in the Labor Office, looked up your records, saw that you were 25, had been in the in Air Force four years, 1942-46.  I was 17 and didn’t want the world to know I was holding hands with an old man.  Eight years age difference then was a big difference.

 

FRANK:  Then what happened?  Why did we click?  How come we married?

 

BETTY:  You persisted.  You wouldn’t give up.  You sent me daily love notes in my mail box, kept holding hands, kept going with me to prayer group and choir practice, sometimes handing me a nice flower you illegally picked when no one was looking. 

 

FRANK:  You’re always making me out to be worse than I was.

 

BETTY:  I still remember the one-glass-5-cent-coca-cola you bought with two straws, no ice, and told me to sip, slowly, after you, to make it last.  Cheap skate.  I tried to break it off.  You kept coming back.   What was I to do?  [Sudden shift of mood]. 

 

FRANK:  [mock whimper] You make me want to cry.  Boo hoo hoo.

 

BETTY:  Don’t look so sad.  Don’t cry.  You weren’t so bad.  Matter of fact, you were a bit of a sweetie.  Don’t let it go to your head.  There’s room for improvement.

 

FRANK:  I remember how sweet you were, lovely, nice to be with, but always very proper.  I remember how shocked I was that day early in our going together–you told me flat out:  “Frank, if our being together isn’t going to lead anywhere, then good-bye.”  I was shocked, shocked; scared, scared; having fun was one thing.  But this Betty girl meant business. 

 

BETTY  (shouts) :  You bet I did.  And what did you do about it?

 

FRANK:  Before the day ended I crawled back.  I asked:  Where can I find a diamond engagement ring cheap, cheap?

 

BETTY:  Cheap skate!  And I asked:  Does that mean you are going to fall on your knees and ask for my hand in marriage?

 

FRANK:  I said, no; it means let your folks eyeball me; my folks eyeball you.  If that doesn’t throw them into a fit, we might make it.  You prepare your Daddy. I’ll speak to him man to man.  If he has no objection and I can find an engagement ring at a Jewelry Store that is having a fire sale, I’ll buy it, and propose.  If you accept, we’ll set the date—I’ll bite the bullet, even if it kills me.   I’ll do it.  [sobs]   I’ll give up my freedom.  Gone with the wind, just like my hair.

 

BETTY:  I think you also said: let’s shift gears.   Or was it: let’s get this plane off the ground?  Or was it: There goes my freedom.  Or was it: Having a wife means work and strife.

 

FRANK: Remember, before I got the engagement ring I surprised you by winning for you a nice ladies’ wrist watch; remember?

 

BETTY:  Yes, back then you were always trying to win something in stupid contests:  Send in the answer to the following question in 25 words or less and win a prize.

 

FRANK:  I remember, Babes.  It was:  “Contaflex watches are good for rough country living because….”  In 25 words or less.

 

BETTY:  You sent in one entry in your name, one in my name and never told me about it.

 

FRANK:  My entry lost, your entry won.  Lucky you.  I thought giving you that win-win Contaflex watch might hold you until I could rub two nickles together and find a proper engagement ring at a Jewelry store fire sale.

 

BETTY:  Then you invited yourself to my parents’ home, which scared me to death.  The first beau ever to want to be looked over as a possible suitor.  I knew it had to be done, yet it worried me.

 

 FRANK:  About your father: I did get a shock the day I spoke to him man to man.  The night before in a corner of the room I slept in was his shotgun.  I didn’t sleep a wink worrying what that shotgun was doing there.  I didn’t know he normally kept his squirrel gun there.   But your Dad was gracious.  He said:  “Son, remember, come back to visit anytime.  When you marry we will remove Betty’s plate from the table; but don’t expect us to add your two places to our table permanently.  ¶I got his drift right away: he was saying:  Get a job, make a living, build a love nest of your own.  Don’t be a bum.

 

BETTY:  [Laughs, Ha!]:  Yes, but after the wedding my Dad and Mum took from their kitchen drawers every thing they didn’t need, give it to us to help start our housekeeping. 

 

FRANK:  We found our first teaching jobs through the Berea College Alumni Office.  The president of Ferrum Jr. College near Roanoke, VA, wanted to hire Berea graduates who wouldn’t expect much pay.  We applied, were married June 12, 1950, and on our honeymoon went by train to be interviewed. 

 

BETTY:  We spent the first four nights in hotels.  When we reached Ferrum, VA, we reported to President Nathaniel H. Davis.  He took us to Nurse Bulifont, an old fashioned strait laced nurse who put us in separate rooms in the student infirmary, separate rooms, mind you.   What a honeymoon:  four night in hotels, fifth night in separate rooms in a college hospital infirmary.

 

FRANK:  That night alone in bed I heard a soft knock on the door. Was it nurse Bulifont?  No.  Was it Pres. Nathaniel H. Davis?  No.  It was you, asking timidly, “May I come?  I’m scared.  May I stay with you tonight and slip back to my own room early tomorrow?”  I said: “Ya, Ya” What fun.  Yippitty do dah, Yippitti day. 

 

BETTY:  Remember 40 years later on your last teaching job at Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, N.C. just before we came to Uplands?  We walked a lot on campus holding hands, past the dining room and the Tower, a student hangout.  Remember several times some girl students came up to us, said they enjoyed seeing us often walking hand in hand on campus.  Made us feel good. 

 

FRANK:  We’ve walk a lot holding hands here at Uplands, often past the Village Market arm in arm, in all kinds of weather.  Remember that bearded salty old timer who must have seen us often, seated in his pickup truck.  He put his head out the window and asked you good naturedly, “Hey, there.  Is he holding you up or are you holding him up?”  We laughed.  You, BETTY replied, “We’re holding each other up!”  He and we all laughed as we went on our way.

 

BETTY:  Well, Doll, all in all you are not so bad.  In fact, you’re pretty good.  Thanks for the memories.  Hurry now and get ready for the big party.

 

 FRANK:  (softly, lovingly). OK.  After a quick hug and a little whirl around the room.  [They stand, hug, do a little jig, kiss, while …]

 

PEGGY HAPPY:  [at mike says loudly]:   D, d, d, dats all, folks.   End of skit.  End of Betty  and Franklin Parker’s “A trip Down Memory Lane.”   Next, the Parkers will parody the song, “Love and Marriage.”

 

 [Singing]:

 

FRANK:  Love and marriage

Go together like a horse and carriage

 

This I tell you brother

 You can’t have one without the other.

 

 

BETTY:  Love and marriage, love and marriage

It’s an institute you can’t disparage

 

 

 Dad was told by Mother

You can’t have one, without the other.

 

 Peggy Happy:  The Parkers last fling is their parody of “Do You Love Me?”  From Fiddler On the Roof.  [Loud, clear, rapid fire, sing song tune]

 

FRANK:  It’s a new world, Betty.  A new world.  Young people are falling in love.  I ask you, Betty, Do you love me?

 

BETTY:  Do I what?

 

FRANK:  Do you love me?

 

BETTY:  Do I love you?    With young people getting married.  And there’s trouble in the town.   You’re upset, you’re worn out.  Go inside, go lie down!  Maybe it’s indigestion.

 

FRANK:  “Betty,  I’m asking you a question…”  Do you love me?

 

BETTY:  You’re a fool

 

FRANK:  “I know…” But do you love me?

 

BETTY:  Do I love you?  For 61 years I’ve washed your clothes,  Cooked your meals, cleaned your house, Given you joy, milked the cow.  After 61 years, why talk about love right now?

 

FRANK:  Betty, The first time we met at Berea College I liked you, but I was scared.

 

BETTY:  I was shy.

 

FRANK:  I was nervous.

 

BETTY:  So was I.

 

FRANK:   But our hearts said we’d learn to love each other.   And now I’m asking, Betty,  Do you love me?

 

BETTY:  I’m your wife!

 

FRANK:  “I know…”  But do you love me?

 

BETTY:  Do I love him?   For 61 years I’ve lived with him, Fought with him, starved with him.  For 61 years my bed is his.  If that’s not love, what is?

 

FRANK:  Then you do, you do, love me?

 

BETTY:  I suppose I do.

 

FRANK:  And I suppose I love you too!

 

[Both sing together]

 

It doesn’t change a thing

 But even so

 

After 61 years   

 Love, It’s so nice to know.     [they shake hands, whirl around, kiss]

 

PEGGY HAPPY:  END of “Do You Love Me,” parody from Fidler on the Roof.  A big hand to the little love birds.  [applause].  Next to last on the program is…the Parker’s last “Thank you:”

 

FRANK:  Before we say Goodbye–

Thank you each

So very much.

Our Hearts you did touch.

 

We thank key people here

Who are so very dear.

 

Let’s applaud them at the end

Before we homeward tend.

 

BETTY:  Thanks to Quessie Krell

 Heritage Loop representative

 Always helpful

 Never repetitive.

 

FRANK:  Thanks Jackie Dwenger

For food and support

 You are the most helpful sort.

 

 

 

BETTY: Thanks Al Dwenger

 Our Great town mayor

 Who made our skit so much better.

 

FRANK:  Thanks Paul Happy

 He  previewed our skit

 And made it more snappy.

 

BETTY: Thank you, Gerri Mize

 Who came from so far

 Florida to England to Pleasant Hill

 Having you here is such a great thrill.

 

FRANK:  Thanks to the Webers, Jo Ann and George

From Sparta and Bon Air

 You’re here we know

 Because you care.

 

BETTY: Thanks to three nieces

Emily Hayden, Massachusetts

 Diana Glass and Micki Beerman,

New York City

 

Three precious dears

 Who are without peers.

 

FRANK:  Thanks for grand music

 That lifted us so high

 From Emily and Dan Byrens

And our Kate Smith singer,

Brenda Fry.

 

BETTY: Thanks to Fran and Robin Markham

For making  the DVD

 A treasure that

 We will forever see.

 

FRANK:  Thanks to Peggy Happy

Who thought it all up

Took an old house with a big old tree

 Made it a paradise for all to see

 

Took us two under her wing

Gave us joy and eternal Spring. [Great applause] 

 

_________________________________________________________

 

PEGGY HAPPY:  Thanks for coming

 That’s all I can say.

 Your presence made this

 Our greatest Day.  

 

Love to A L L. 

 We’ve had a B A L L.

 

End of Skit.  Thanks for reading it. 

 

To access our other writings enter in google.com or bing.com or any other search engine:  Franklin Parker, or Franklin and Betty J. Parker, or Franklin Parker and Betty J. Parker, or bfparker.

 

For the titles of 275 of our published works in the Library of Congress, access:

 

http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=Franklin+Parker%2C+1921-&qt=results_page

 

Contact:  bfparker@frontiernet.net

Posted by bfparker@frontiernet.net in 04:42:58 | Permalink | Comments Off

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

How Albert Einstein (1879-1955) Changed the Way We See the Universe, by Franklin and Betty J. Parker, bfparker@frontiernet.net

<b>How Albert Einstein (1879-1955) Changed the Way We See the Universe, by Franklin and Betty J. Parker, bfparker@frontiernet.net     Review of Walter Isaacson’s Einstein, <i>His Life and Universe</i>, NY: Simon &amp; Schuster, 2007, and related sources, given March 17, 2008, Uplands Retirement Village. Pleasant Hill, TN.</b>

<b>This is the true story of an independent loner, largely self-taught, a high school dropout who failed his technical college entrance exam, entered that technical college by the skin of his teeth, irritated his professors, barely graduated, and—by not bowing to authority—had to live hand-to-mouth on low pay substitute teaching for 18 months.  In 1905, while a lowly Swiss Patent Office clerk, he published 5 papers which changed the way we see the universe.  How did he do it?</b>

<b>We are not scientists.  What follows is our laypersons’ understanding of journalist-author Walter Isaacson’s 2007 bestseller Einstein, <i>His Life and Universe</i>.1  Author Isaacson, Time magazine’s managing editor when his staff voted Einstein the most important person of the 20th century,2 now heads the Aspen Institute, a think tank for executives, Washington, D.C.3</b>

<b>Recently opened Albert Einstein archives account for Isaacson’s Einstein biography, plus another biography by German science writer Jürgen Neffe.4   Over 500 Einstein biographies exist.  An Einstein film based on Isaacson’s book is planned plus other Einstein film projects.5</b>

<b>This interest in Einstein, we think, comes from his newly opened papers.  While known as a scientific genius, few people know of his troubled early life; fewer know how he changed the way we see the universe.</b>

<b>Albert’s father Hermann Einstein (1847-1902), at age 29 in Bavaria, Germany, married Pauline Koch (1858-1920), age 18 in 1876, both non-observing Jews. Pauline, his mother, a prosperous grain dealer’s daughter, was cultured, well read, a pianist and music lover. Hermann, whom she dominated, was generous, thoughtful, a devoted husband and father who failed in business.6</b>

<b>Albert Einstein was born March 14, 1879, in Ulm, near Stuttgart, Germany; born into a world where Isaac Newton’s (1642-1727) laws of motion and gravity had satisfactorily explained earth’s place in the universe over 200 years earlier.  No one then dreamed that anyone, let alone Albert Einstein, would add significantly to Newton’s laws.</b>

<b>Albert grew up among electric generators and motors. His uncle, engineer-inventor Jakob Einstein (1850-1912), introduced electricity into southern German towns, as Thomas Edison (1847-1931) did in New York City.7  Pauline Einstein, with a Koch family loan, encouraged husband Hermann’s partnership with Jakob. After Albert’s birth, the Einsteins moved (1880) from Ulm to Munich for better business opportunity.</b>

<b>Albert’s big head at birth and his being a late talker evoked fear that he was abnormal. Albert later told a biographer, “My parents were worried because I started to talk comparatively late, and they consulted a doctor….”8</b>

<b>When Albert was 2 his only sibling sister was born, Marie, called “Maja” Einstein (1881-1951).  She later described him as quiet and introspective.9</b>

<b>When Albert was 4 and ill, his father gave him a compass to play with. Albert later wrote: “When I saw…[its needle always point north, no matter how I turned it], the fact that it behaved in such a fixed way changed my understanding of the world. Until then, I thought that one thing had to touch another to make it move…. I realized that something deeply hidden had to lie behind things.” 10 These thoughts were an early hint of his lifelong search for unity in nature.</b>

<b>Albert was kept at home until age 7, taught the 3 Rs by a tutor, then enrolled in a nearby Catholic primary school, ages 7 to 9, 1885-88. He did well academically, received Catholic religious instruction in school plus state-required private Jewish instruction from a relative at home.</b>

<b>Taken as a little boy to watch a Prussian military parade, he cried out in horror: “I don’t want to be [regimented like]…those poor people.”11  He disliked school discipline and rote learning, especially in secondary school at Munich’s Luitpold Gymnasium, 6 years, ages 9 to 15 (1888-94).</b>

<b>Good in science and math, less interested in other subjects, he irritated some teachers by questioning their knowledge.  Asked about Albert’s potential, his headmaster said: “…he’ll never make a success.” Told by a teacher that he was not welcome in class, Albert said he had done nothing wrong.  His teacher said: “Yes, …but you sit there in the back row and smile and your mere presence here spoils the respect of the class for me.”  Albert later called his primary teachers sergeants, his gymnasium teachers lieutenants.12</b>

<b>Uncle Jakob taught him algebra. Albert mastered calculus by age 12. Reading math and science books reinforced his appreciation of orderliness in nature. He later said: “As a boy of 12, I was thrilled to see that it was possible to find out truth by reasoning alone, without the help of any outside experience.”13</b>

<b>Piano and violin lessons, urged by his mother, made him a lifelong violinist. He saw harmony and unity in music, science, and nature.</b>

<b>Max Talmey (1867-1941), age 21, a poor Polish Jewish medical student, invited to Thursday night dinners from 1889 for a few years, shared with Albert, from the age of 10, table talk on science, math, and philosophy.14</b>

<b>Talmey gave Albert a popular natural science book series describing current scientific experiments.15  The books were full of imaginative, creative what-ifs, leading Albert at 16 to ask: “What if I could ride alongside a beam of light?”  This question eventually led to his 1905 and 1915 theories of relativity.</b>

<b>Asked years later (1921) what he thought of those science books, Albert said: very good books, “[They] exerted a great influence on my whole development.”16</b>

<b>Talmey, spurring Albert’s curiosity at an impressionable age, remarked in his 1932 book about young Albert’s “exceptional intelligence [which enabled him to discuss with me, a college graduate,] subjects far beyond the comprehension of so young a child.”17</b>

<b>Albert, religious before age 10, became a doubter from age 12.  He read with Talmey philosopher Immanuel Kant’s (1724-1804) <i>Critique of Pure Reason</i>, discussed Kant’s belief that the universe can be understood by thought alone. Albert read and agreed with philosopher Benedict Spinoza (1632-77) that God works through nature’s orderliness.</b>

<b>Business failure caused the Einsteins to move to Italy near their northern Italy partner firm in Milan, then to nearby Pavia. Albert at 15 needed 3 more years to complete secondary school. His parents decided he should remain in Munich where an Einstein relative would look after him until he graduated.</b>

<b>Lonely, unhappy, Albert looked for a way out of the Munich Gymnasium, which he disliked, knowing some teachers disliked him. He also dreaded German compulsory military service at age 17, two years ahead.</b>

<b>Albert, alone, age 15, asked the family physician for a letter stating that because of isolation from his family he was suffering from nervous exhaustion and needed the bracing air of northern Italy. From his math teacher he got a letter listing his high math scores.</b>

<b>This high school dropout took a train to Pavia, Italy,18 arrived unexpectedly at his parents’ home, and told them why he had dropped out of school and how he planned to continue his education.</b>

<b>He would study on his own, take the entrance exam in autumn 1895 to enter the highly regarded Polytechnic College in Zurich, Switzerland,19 which did not require secondary school graduation if an applicant passed its high entrance exams.  He also said: I want to renounce my German citizenship.</b>

<b>His concerned father prudently delayed submitting renunciation of German citizenship forms until Albert in Switzerland had applied for Swiss citizenship.  Albert was stateless  from 1896 until granted Swiss citizenship in 1901.</b>

<b>Helping in the family’s Pavia shop with its electric lighting equipment, Albert impressed Uncle Jakob by quickly solving electrical problems. Uncle Jakob assured everyone: “You will hear from him yet.”</b>

<b>In spring and summer 1895 Albert hiked the Alps and Apennines from Pavia to Genoa to see his maternal Uncle Julius Koch. He visited art and other culture centers, delighted at Italian friendliness, so unlike the stern Germans.</b>

<b>Reading physics textbooks helped him prepare for the Zurich Polytechnic entrance exams. He would be 16 when he took the Polytechnic entrance test intended for age 18 and older. A family friend got him a waiver of the age requirement.20</b>

<b>Albert passed the Zurich Polytechnic test in math and science but failed other subjects. Polytechnic Director Albin Herzog (1852-1909) suggested that Albert take a final secondary school year of guided study at nearby Aarau high school, whose graduates were automatically admitted to the Zurich Polytechnic.21</b>

<b>Aarau Cantonal High School, 25 miles west of Zurich, influenced by progressive Swiss educator Johann Pestalozzi (1746-1827),22 was teacher-friendly, student-centered, perfect for Albert.</b>

<b>He later told a friend: “In Aarau I made my first rather childish experiments in thinking that had a direct bearing on the Special [Relativity] Theory. If a person could run after a light wave with the same speed as light, you would have a wave arrangement which could be completely independent of time….”23</b>

<b>He boarded with principal Jost and Rosa Winteler.  Marie, one of their 7 children, was Albert’s first girl friend; she 18, he 16.24</b>

<b>With the Wintelers, Albert developed a quick wit and debonair jesting manner. When not in class or studying or hiking or playing violin duets or flirting with Marie Winteler, he joined the Winteler family’s liberal conversation.25</b>

<b>Graduating from the Aarau Cantonal High School with the second highest grades except in French, he wrote of his future plans as follows:</b>

<b>”…I will enroll in the Zurich Polytechnic….stay…four years [1896-1900] to study mathematics and physics…. I will be a teacher …of these sciences…. ¶[I have a] talent for abstract…thinking…. I am attracted by…the profession of science.”26</b>

<b>Albert enrolled, Oct. 29, 1896, in Zurich Polytechnic’s department preparing secondary school math and physics teachers, headed by Prof. Heinrich Weber (1842-1913).27</b>

<b>Romance came at Zurich Polytechnic with Mileva Maric (1875-1948), the only woman student in this department, from Novi Sad, Serbia, daughter of a wealthy landowner and judge. 28</b>

<b>Mileva, bright in math and physics, determined to succeed, had won top honors in an all-male Serbian scientific school. She at 21, Albert at 17, casual friends, hiked together in the summer of 1897. Albert admired Mileva for her science interest and for being, like himself, a rebel, outsider, survivor.29</b>

<b>Friendship ripened into love. Mileva Maric became, in Walter Isaacson’s words: “Einstein’s muse, partner, lover, wife [16 years, 1903-19]…and [finally] antagonist.”30</b>

<b>In his last two years at Zurich Polytechnic Albert skipped Prof. Heinrich Weber’s physics lectures, disappointed at Weber’s neglecting contemporary physics. Albert was enthralled with James Clerk Maxwell’s (1831-79) books on <i>Electricity and Magnetism</i>, 1873; and <i>Matter and Motion</i>, 1876.</b>

<b>Albert irritated his major professor by addressing him as “Herr Weber” instead of the more respectful “Herr Professor.” Prof. Weber gave Albert a dressing down (1898-99): “You’re a clever boy. But you have one great fault: you’ll never let yourself be told anything.”31</b>

<b>Albert’s other physics professor, Jean Pernet (1845-1902) asked his assistant: “What do you make of Einstein? He always does something different from what I have ordered.” The assistant replied, “He does indeed, Herr Professor, but his solutions are right and the methods he uses are of great interest.”32</b>

<b>Albert focused on physics, less on math. He later regretted skipping math Prof. Hermann Minkowski’s (1864-1909) advanced math lectures.33</b>

<b>Studying what interested him, Albert risked failing final exams. Friends tutored him: Mileva Maric, engineering student Micheleangelo Besso,34 and math major Marcel Grossmann’s (1878-1936) who shared his detailed lecture notes.  Grossmann understood Albert’s independent spirit, recognized Albert’s talents, and told his parents, “This Einstein will one day be a great man.”35</b>

<b>Albert barely passed his final exams. Mileva Maric failed but planned to try again.36   Financial aid from Albert’s family stopped on graduation. His fellow graduates all received coveted teaching jobs or research assistantships. Albert sent out many applications.  No one answered.</b>

<b>Albert complained that Prof. Heinrich Weber’s bad references prevented his getting a job. Mileva attributed his joblessness to anti-Semitism and to his rebel attitude: “You know my sweetheart has a sharp tongue.”37</b>

<b>Today we are shocked that Einstein, an acknowledged genius, could not find an academic job after college graduation. For 18 months his only income was from short term low pay substitute teaching.</b>

<b>Isaacson described Einstein in this jobless period as: “Einstein the Nobody.” His father Hermann, knowing Albert had twice applied unsuccessfully to one professor for an assistantship, wrote that professor, without telling Albert:</b>

<b>”My son Albert, …22…, unhappy with his present lack of position,…[feels] …that he is a burden on us, people of modest means….¶I have taken the liberty of [asking you] to…write him… a few words of encouragement, so that he might recover his joy in living and working. ¶If…you could secure him an Assistant’s position…my gratitude would know no bounds…. Hermann Einstein.” No reply ever came.38</b>

<b>Opposed to Albert’s romance with Mileva Maric, Albert’s mother thought Mileva unsuitable, older, unhealthy, non-Jewish, a foreigner. During summer 1900 family vacation his mother asked Albert, “What will become of your Dollie now?”39</b>

<b>Albert replied: engagement and marriage. His mother wept.  Still worse, she and Albert’s father sent a jointly signed letter to Mileva Maric’s parents listing reasons against the marriage.</b>

<b>At last came a job possibility.  Albert’s friend Marcel Grossmann told his father of Albert’s joblessness. Grossmann’s father spoke to his friend, Swiss Patent Office Director Friedrich Haller (1844-1936). Haller told Albert to apply when a Patent Office job was posted. On this possibility, Albert moved to Bern, the Swiss capital, where the Patent Office was located.</b>

<b>Albert and Mileva had a romantic interlude at Lake Como on the Swiss-Italian border, spring 1901. Mileva wrote Albert she was pregnant. Albert promised to find a job “no matter how humble…[and despite] my scientific goals and my personal vanity.”40</b>

<b>Albert was with his family the summer of 1901 when Mileva retook her failed Zurich Polytechnic final exams. Three months pregnant, sick, her pregnancy a secret, with Albert’s parents opposed to their marriage, Mileva failed again.  Nor was Albert with her when, home in Serbia, she gave birth to a baby girl Lieserl, early Feb. 1902.41</b>

<b>Albert never saw, his parents never knew, the world never knew about Lieserl until 1986 from newly found Einstein family letters. Why the secrecy?  Speculating from Albert’s then troubled situation–he was the jobless, unconventional, near-bohemian father of an illegitimate child, unable to support a family, whose parents opposed his love mate. If he became publicly tarred as immoral he might not get the Swiss Patent Office job.</b>

<b>Mileva, in Serbia, her family helping, cared for the baby, exchanged anxious love letters with Albert, patiently awaited his hoped for job, his promised marriage. Historians speculate that Mileva’s close friend in Serbia took custody of Lieserl, that Lieserl died of scarlet fever.42</b>

<b>Needing money, awaiting the Patent Office job, Albert in a Bern newspaper advertised: “Private lessons in Mathematics and Physics….. Trial lessons free.” Several local students responded.43</b>

<b>Albert’s lectures to the jokingly named “Olympia Academy” students gave way to freewheeling discussions on physics, philosophy, classic books, over food and drink, on country walks, and on mountain hikes.44</b>

<b>Albert was finally appointed Swiss Patent Office Technical Expert Class 3 Provisional (on trial), June 16, 1902.  Director Friedrich Haller told  him: “When you pick up an application think that everything the inventor says is wrong.”  Be critical, vigilant, question every premise, challenge everything–an approach Albert liked. 45</b>

<b>Soon expert in judging patent applications, Albert rushed through the day’s work, did his own thought experiments, hid his notes when visitors or Director Haller approached. The Patent Office job, Albert later wrote: “…enforced my many-sided thinking and also provided important stimuli to…[my] thought[s on physics].”46</b>

<b>Hermann Einstein, 55, dying in Milan, Italy, Oct. 10, 1902, finally gave Albert permission to marry Mileva Maric. He and Mileva were married Jan. 6, 1903, in a civil ceremony attended only by two “Olympia Academy” friends.</b>

<b>With a steady job, income, marriage, regularity, Albert and Mileva had a son, Hans Albert Einstein, born May 14, 1904.47 Albert also had from 1904 as Patent Office co-worker his close friend Michelangelo Besso.  They shared scientific ideas and constantly discussed how mass (or matter), light, space, and time were related.  Between 1901-04 Albert wrote and published reviews of new physics writings and several so called “practice papers.”</b>

<b>Then, in 1905—about ideas he’d puzzled over for years–Albert published four papers plus his doctoral dissertation in the German physics journal, <i>Annalen der Physik</i>.  In time physicists recognized the originality and importance of these papers.</b>

<b>Of this 1905 “Miracle Year” he later wrote: “A storm broke out in my mind.”</b>

<b>First of Albert’s four 1905 papers was on the photo-electric effect of light, long thought to be a wave. Light, Albert wrote, is both a wave and fast-moving particles. When light particles hit certain metals they cause a mysterious release of electrons from the metals.</b>

<b>This photo-electric effect of light is the basis of many light operated devices: some automatic door openers, compact disks,  CAT scans using x-ray imaging for cancer, etc.</b>

<b>Albert’s photo-electric effect paper also helped establish Quantum Physics, the study of the strange behavior of electrons circling protons inside atoms. This photo-electric effect paper, because it was verifiable and practical, won Albert the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics.48</b>

<b>Albert’s second 1905 paper explained “Brownian Movement,” named after Scottish botanist Robert Brown (1773-1858), who found in 1827 under a microscope that tiny grains of pollen placed in water  moved about irregularly.</b>

<b>Seventy-eight years after Robert  Brown’s discovery, Albert proved that water molecules randomly hitting the pollen grains caused this jittery motion. His paper convinced doubting scientists that molecules and atoms exist, are active, and can be mathematically quantified.49</b>

<b>His third 1905 paper on Special Theory of Relativity, more important, was less understood.  Albert built on the Copernican-Kepler-Galileo finding that everything moves: our earth turns on its axis, revolves around our sun, which revolves with other suns in our Milky Way galaxy, which revolves among a spiral of other galaxies, etc.</b>

<b>Albert built his Special Theory of Relativity on two certainties: 1-the laws of physics are the same everywhere; 2-nothing travels faster than light at 186,000 miles per second.</b>

<b>Albert’s insight was that a movement takes place, an event occurs, each in its own frame of reference, relative to, in relation to, an observer’s place and rate of movement, which is the observer’s frame of reference.  In short: movements, events are relative to an observer.</b>

<b>On Albert’s daily streetcar ride home from work, looking back, he saw Bern’s famous Clock Tower receding.  He thought: if his streetcar heading away from the Clock Tower approached the speed of light, its clock hands would seem to slow down while his own pocket watch ticked normally.</b>

<b>On earth, Albert knew, where the fastest moving thing is a tiny fraction the speed of light’s 186,000 miles per second, Newton’s laws hold firm. Time and space, as Newton believed, do seem separate and fixed. But on a fast moving spaceship, approaching the speed of light, a clock aboard the spaceship (time) slows down.</b>

<b>The faster the spaceship, the more its clock slows down, called Time Dilation. Time Dilation has been proved. In 1971 two identically set atomic clocks, one stationary on the ground, the other jet-flown around the world, when compared, showed that the jet flown clock had slowed down.</b>

<b>To humans inside a speeding spaceship all seems normal. But as it passes a stationary observer, because of the observer’s frame of reference, the observer sees the oncoming spaceship shorter in front and longer in back.</b>

<b>Albert’s findings–startling, revolutionary, strange even to him–took time to be absorbed, argued about, understood, tested, and ultimately accepted by scientists.</b>

<b>Albert’s genius was to think differently, outside common thought, “outside the box.” His younger questioning rebellious skepticism led to these 1905 intuitive grand discoveries.</b>

<b>Albert worked out mathematical proof that Time and Space are not fixed, not separate, but are interwoven as spacetime. To our 3 dimensions of length, width, and height he added a fourth dimension–spacetime.50   The only fixed factor is the speed of light.</b>

<b>Albert’s fourth 1905 paper, a footnote to his third Special Theory of Relativity paper, held that matter and energy are similar and can be converted one into the other. Marie Curie (1867-1934), for example, found in 1902 that uranium from pitch-blend (matter), gave off electronic radiation energy.  Albert independently conceived of this matter-to-energy conversion in his famous formula: E=mc2.</b>

<b>E for Energy equals mass (which is, matter), multiplied by c (c for celeritus, Latin for speed of light), squared.  186,000 miles per second, squared, is so huge a number that if atoms on a pinhead could be split apart, their energy would explode like an atom bomb.51</b>

<b>Biographer Walter Isaacson wrote: “Einstein’s 1905 burst of creativity was astonishing. He had devised a revolutionary quantum theory of light, helped prove the existence of atoms, explained Brownian motion, upended the concept of space and time, and produced what would become science’s best known equation.”52</b>

<b>Albert’s Special Theory of Relativity covered only bodies moving parallel in straight lines at constant speeds.</b>

<b>It would take him 10 more years to find a General Theory of Relativity, backed by math, that explained how and why bodies in space move at varying speeds in curved motion around other bodies.53</b>

<b>Albert, waiting to be recognized, still needing Patent Office income, wrote other scholarly papers and also completed his Ph.D. dissertation for the University of Zurich, summer 1905.54</b>

<b>His application to be a University of Bern lecturer required submitting another original physics paper. This he did allowing him to lecture, unpaid except for student fees, 1908-1909, early mornings, before Patent Office hours, thus to only a few students. 55</b>

<b>The first scholar to inquire about Relativity was the world renowned University of Berlin physicist Max Planck (1858-1947,) who soon added Relativity to his own lectures.56</b>

<b>Planck’s assistant, Max von Laue (1879-1960), sent to Bern to consult Albert, was surprised to find him working as a lowly Patent Office clerk.</b>

<b>Noticed, at last, Albert received job offers. He resigned from the Patent Office July 6, 1909, where his best thinking had been done for 7 years. He became associate professor of physics, University of Zurich, 1909-10. He moved with Mileva, and 5-year old Hans Einstein to Zurich, Oct. 15, 1909, where their second son Eduard was born, July 28, 1910.57</b>

<b>He was full professor at German Speaking Karl-Ferdinand University, Prague, 1911-12.  While in Prague he attended a science conference in Brussels, Belgium, October 1911. At 32, the youngest physicist present, he met for the first time the greatest living physicists of the time, including Marie Curie.58</b>

<b>Albert next was physics professor at Zurich Polytechnic, 1912-1914, his alma mater, then granting Ph.D’s.  Here, luckily,  his friend Marcel Grossmann, head of the Polytechnic’s math department, taught Albert tensor calculus for curved space he needed to prove his 1915 General Theory of Relativity.</b>

<b>Albert’s last European position was at the prestigious University of Berlin, 1914-1933, 19 years, through World War I, Germany’s defeat and economic collapse, and Hitler’s rise to power, which forced Albert’s move to the U.S. in 1933.59</b>

<b>Raising two boys, the younger one, Eduard, a schizophrenic, Mileva’s science interest had waned. She resented Albert’s several extra-marital affairs, was bitter that he took the prestigious Berlin position partly to be near his divorced cousin Elsa Einstein (1876-1936), with whom he had an affair.</b>

<b>Marital friction deepened. Albert wrote out conditions under which he would live with Mileva: “You make sure . . . that I receive my three meals regularly in my room. You are neither to expect intimacy nor to reproach me in any way.”60  They separated. Mileva and the two boys left Berlin July 1914 for Zurich a month before WW I began (Aug. 1, 1914).</b>

<b>To get Mileva to agree to a divorce, Albert promised her and the boys the money from the Nobel Prize in Physics he expected, having been nominated annually since 1910.  The long divorce proceedings ended on Feb. 14, l919.  Albert admitted adultery.</b>

<b>Elsa, Albert’s cousin, divorced,61 lived with her two daughters Lisa and Margot in Berlin, where Albert visited her in 1912, before taking the Berlin job.</b>

<b>Separation and divorce from Mileva, overwork, carelessness about his health, caused Albert to become seriously ill during 1917-19.   Elsa restored his health. They married June 2, 1919. Elsa gave him regularity, protection, and freedom to think and write.</b>

<b>Albert’s first insight into his 1915 General Theory of Relativity came in a thought experiment in 1907 while still at the Patent Office.  His thought was: if a workman fell from a roof, until he hit the ground, he and everything on him would be weightless in free fall. So too would be people in a falling elevator atop a tall building whose holding cable had snapped.</b>

<b>His surprising insight was that moving heavenly bodies, like people and objects in free fall, carry spacetime with them.</b>

<b>His insights, greatly simplified, were: 1-The larger a moving heavenly body is, the more curved spacetime it carries around with it. 2-Newton’s gravity is really curved spacetime. 3-When starlight reaches a large mass like the sun that starlight will be slightly bent by the curved spacetime around the sun’s enormous mass. 4-If he figured the precise arc of light bent around an eclipsed sun, then a photograph of that eclipse would prove the correctness of his General Theory of Relativity.</b>

<b>Helped by tensor calculus taught him by his math friend Marcel Grossmann, Albert published his General Relativity paper, March 20, 1915, revised in 1916.62</b>

<b>In 1917 with WW I raging, Britain’s Royal Astronomer Frank Watson Dyson (1868-1939) planned for Cambridge University astronomer Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882-1944) to head a British team to photograph the sun’s eclipse predicted two years later, on May 29, 1919.63</b>

<b>Two photo team were sent to photograph the eclipse:  one went to Principe, a Portuguese island off West Africa; another photo team went to Sobral, northern Brazil, the two best viewing sites. These photos confirmed Einstein’s predicted arc of light deflection.  Einstein’s General Relativity Theory was thus proved true.</b>

<b>England’s greatest scientists flocked to the Great Room, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London, Nov. 6, 1919.   Dyson reported.  Eddington reported.  Others commented.  Royal Society Pres. J. J. Thomson, concluding, proclaimed:  …”[this] is…one of the highest achievements of human thought.”64</b>

<b>London Times, Nov. 7, 1919, headline: “Revolution in Science. New Theory of the Universe. Newton’s Ideas Overthrown.” Similar headlines, with Einstein’s photo, emblazoned newspapers worldwide and helped make Einstein an instant hero.65</b>

<b>Did this hero worship come from public relief that long, bloody, devastating WW I was over? that God, morality, good will, peace on earth—which many thought had died in the trenches–were restored?</b>

<b>With peace came news that Einstein, an anti-war German-born Swiss citizen, had discovered something new about the universe. His discovery was confirmed by photos taken by an English Quaker pacifist scientist.  WW I hatred was replaced by peaceful international scientific cooperation–temporarily.</b>

<b>Albert, amazed at the adulation, called the newspaper accounts “amusing feats of imagination.” The war-weary public, wanting someone to idolize and lionize, embraced this stunned, sad-eyed, long-haired, absent-minded professor. What Relativity meant did not matter.  His opinion was asked about everything under the sun. His disarming, witty replies, widely reported, brought smiles.  Elsa Einstein loved the attention.</b>

<b>The Nobel Prize in Physics committee, embarrassed for by-passing Einstein since 1910, awarded Albert its 1921 prize, not for controversial Relativity, but for his practical 1905 photo-electric effect paper. The prize money, $32,000, went as promised to his  ex-wife Mileva Maric and their sons.66</b>

<b>Albert never understood the public adulation but he used it as a platform for his pacifist views. He publicly criticized fellow scientists who worked for Germany’s war effort in making poison gas and flame throwers.</b>

<b>He stated publicly that if even 2% of military draftees refused to serve, all war machines would grind to a halt.  Anti-Semitism, his own pacifism, and his public opposition to the early Nazis made him a marked man.</b>

<b>His books were burned as “Jewish science.” A price was put on his head dead or alive.  His Berlin bank funds were blocked. His country home at Carputh near Berlin was ransacked. He fled to the U.S., worked at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J., 22 years, from 1933 to his death.</b>

<b>Hitler’s atrocities modified Einstein’s pacifism.  Other refugee European physicists told Einstein that Nazi scientists were close to splitting the uranium atom to make a devastating bomb.   His Aug. 2, 1939, letter warning Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt of the catastrophic danger, along with pressure from British intelligence, led to the Manhattan Project and the atomic bomb.67</b>

<b>Learning of the atom bombs dropped on Japan to end WWII, Einstein regretted having been involved.  Still seeking a unified theory to explain everything, still searching to know the mind of God, still scribbling formulas on paper, he died of a burst stomach aneurysm in Princeton Hospital, N.J., April 18, 1955, age 76.68</b>

<b>Why Einstein? What spurred his early efforts to 1905 to explain the mysteries of the universe, nearly alone, without academic connections, or collegues’ help, or library access?</b>

<b>Curiosity was his spur: stick-to-itiveness, self-confidence, an insatiable drive to discover how God works through nature.  Life’s hurts faded in comparison: teachers who said he would never amount to much; Zurich Polytechnic professors who put him down; prejudice which kept him jobless, illegitimate child, failed marriage, his own shortcomings as husband and father.</b>

<b>Galileo taught him that all planets and objects move, every event occurs, relative to an observer’s frame of reference.</b>

<b>Isaac Newton’s law of gravity taught him that stars and planets, according to size/mass, exert a gravitational “pull” on each other.</b>

<b>Michael Faraday’s (1791-1867) electromagnetism, on which his father and uncle’s electric business was based, led Albert to Scottish James Clerk Maxwell.</b>

<b>Maxwell’s mathematical proof that light at 186,000 miles per second is the visible form of Faraday’s electromagnetism, sparked his probing thought experiments.</b>

<b>A workman falling off a roof, a falling elevator full of people, all weightless in free fall, like heavenly planets, carry spacetime with them.  Spacetime is Newton’s gravity. Spacetime bends light around a large mass.</b>

<b>Einstein’s E=mc2 founded modern cosmology.  It encouraged scientists to search for the origin of the universe, the beginning of spacetime in the Big Bang 13.7 billion year ago, filling our expanding universe, bursting constantly from our sun and other suns in other  galaxies.</b>

<b>Einstein’s E=mc2 gave us nuclear energy for industry and electricity. Nuclear power lights 80% of France, including its Eiffel Tower.</b>

<b>Einstein’s genius, Walter Isaacson concluded, was his imagination guided by faith in nature’s unity.</b>

<b>Young Einstein rebelled against the status quo to give us a new view of the universe.  Old Einstein resisted Quantum Physics, which he helped found, because its followers denied certainty in nature, believed probabilities are all we can rely on.  Einstein said, Nature’s God, ” does not play dice.”</b>

<b>How did he do it—usher in our modern age; this rare, bright, nonconformist rebel?  He was the right person at the right place at the right time.  Will we ever see his like again?</b>

<b>We enjoyed doing this review.  Thank you for being here.
</b>

<b>References Below Include: 1-Books Read by Authors, 2-Footnotes (with added material omitted above due to time limitation) , 3-Best Albert Einstein Internet Sources, 4-About the Authors:</b>

<b>Books Examine by Authors</b>

<b>1. Aczel, Amir D. S. <i>God’s Equation: Einstein, Relativity, and the Expanding Universe</i>. NY: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1999.</b>

<b>2. Bodanis, David. <i>E=mc2: A Biography of the World’s Most Famous Equation</i>. NY: Walker &amp; Co., 2000.</b>

<b>3. Caliprice, Alice, Editor. <i>Dear Professor Einstein</i>. Foreword by Evelyn Einstein.  Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2002. Children’s letters to and from Einstein.</b>

<b>4. Clark, Ronald W. <i>Einstein: The Life and Times</i>. NY: World Publishing Co., 1956.</b>

<b>5. Cwiklik, Robert. <i>Albert Einstein and the Theory of Relativity</i>. Hauppauge, NY: Barron’s Educational Series. Profiles in science for young people, ages 12-13.</b>

<b>6. Hoffman, Banesh, with Collaboration of Helen Dukas. <i>Albert Einstein, Creator and Rebel</i>. NY: Viking Press, 1972.</b>

<b>7. Ireland, Karin. <i>Albert Einstein</i>. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Silver Burdett Press, 1989.</b>

<b>8. Isaacson, Walter. <i>Einstein, His Life and Universe</i>. NY: Simon &amp; Schuster, 2007.</b>

<b>9. Lakin, Patricia. <i>Albert Einstein, Genius of the Twentieth Century</i>. NY: Aladdin, 2005.</b>

<b>10. Overbye, Dennis. <i>Einstein in Love: A Scientific Romance.</i> NY: Penguin Books, 2000.</b>

<b>11. Parker, Barry. <i>Einstein’s Brainchild, Relativity Made Easy</i>. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2000.</b>

<b>12. Schwartz, Joseph and Michael McGinness. <i>E=MC2: Einstein for Beginners</i>. NY: Pantheon Books, 1979.</b>

<b>13. White, Michael and John Gribbin. Einstein, <i>A Life in Science</i></b><b>. NY: Penguin, 1993.</b>

<b>14. Zackheim, Michele. <i>Einstein’s Daughter, The Search for Lieserl</i>. NY: Penguin Putnam, 1999.</b>

<b>Footnotes</b>

<b>1. Authors Franklin and Betty J. Parker wanted to review this Einstein biography because Einstein’s theories were central in Stephen Hawking, <i>A Briefer History of Time</i>, 2005, which we reviewed, April 18, 2007. In that review we realized that although Einstein is an acknowledged science genius, few know of his troubled life, even fewer know how he changed our view of the universe. Our aim is to clarify his life and his enormous contributions. Our Hawking review can be accessed at:</b>

<b>http://www.toadfire.com/blog_full.jsp?blogID=3469
or:    http://bfparker.blog.co.uk/2007/01/15/universe_big_bang_black_holes_dialogue_o~1556047  or:http://bfparker.blog.co.uk/2007/01/15/universe_big_bang_black_holes_dialogue_o%7E1556047</b>

<b>Isaacson’s Acknowledgement credits experts who checked his book’s accuracy, including several editors of Einstein’s papers and some 10 prominent physicists and science historians. See Isaacson, pp. xv-xviii,</b>

<b>2. Interviewed on Dec. 7, 1999, Isaacson told why the then editors, previous editors, and consulting historians chose Albert Einstein as Person of the 20th Century. For Isaacson’s discussion of Einstein’s importance and Einstein’s views on God, see:
http://www.time.com/time/community/transcripts/1999/122799isaacson.html</b>

<b>3. For description of Aspen Institute, Washington, D.C., leadership discussion group with world-wide connections, see:
http://www.aspeninstitute.org/site/c.huLWjeMRKpH/b.4939471</b>

<b>4. For book reviews of Jürgen Neffe, <i>Einstein: A Biography</i>. NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007 (with some comparisons to Walter Isaacson’s 2007 Einstein biography), see:
http://www.google.com/search?q=J%C3%BCrgen+Neffe%2C+Einstein%2C+reviews&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
&lt;http://www.google.com/search?q=J%C3%BCrgen+Neffe%2C+Einstein%2C+reviews&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>5. For 2008 Albert Einstein film projects, see: http://search.curryguide.com/execute/search/nph-web.cgi?query=Albert+Einstein%2C+film+rights&amp;x=20&amp;y=7&amp;ac=pandia&amp;adbg=ffffff&amp;intprom=s&amp;where=</b>

<b>6. For Albert Einstein’s parents, see Isaacson, Chap. Two,
and:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Albert+Einstein’s+parents&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Albert+Einstein%27s+parents&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>7. For Thomas Edison’s (1847-1931) Pearl Street generator station, lower Manhattan, New York City, which first electrified a square mile of NYC buildings on Sept. 4, 1882,
see:
http://search.curryguide.com/execute/search/nph-web.cgi?query=Edison%2C+Pearl+Street%2C+Manhattan%2C+NYC&amp;x=16&amp;y=7&amp;ac=pandia&amp;adbg=ffffff&amp;intprom=s&amp;where=
and:
http://search.curryguide.com/execute/search/nph-web.cgi?query=Edison%2C+Pearl+Street%2C+Manhattan%2C+NYC&amp;x=16&amp;y=7&amp;ac=pandia&amp;adbg=ffffff&amp;intprom=s&amp;where=
and:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Thomas+Edison%2C+Pearl+Street%2C+Manhattan%2C+NYC&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and
http://www.google.com/search?q=Thomas+Edison%2C+Pearl+Street%2C+Manhattan%2C+NYC&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>8. For “Einstein, deformed as baby” and as a late talker,
see:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+believed+deform+as+baby&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US23
and
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+believed+deform+as+baby&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>One account has little Albert saying for the first time at a meal, “The soup is too hot.” His relieved parents asked, “Why haven’t you spoken like this before?” His alleged reply was, “So far everything has been in order.”</b>

<b>9. Marie (called Maja) Einstein (1881-1951) and Albert were close all their lives. She later earned a doctorate in Romance Languages, University of Bern, Switzerland, 1909; married Paul Winteler, 1910; moved with him near Florence, Italy; fled to the U.S. in 1939 to escape persecution of Jews in Italy (husband Paul Winteler could not enter the U.S. for health reasons); and lived with her brother Albert Einstein on 112 Mercer Street, Princeton, NJ, until her death at age 70, June 25, 1951. For her writing on her brother Albert’s boyhood,
see:
http://books.google.com/books?id=dYpwdLWNR2cC&amp;pg=PR15&amp;lpg=PR15&amp;dq=Maja+Winteler-Einstein,+Albert+Einstein&amp;source=web&amp;ots=BWjdGz7UTt&amp;sig=boQnK9ICSMx2xYBzwogQUijXYbU
and:
http://books.google.com/books?id=dYpwdLWNR2cC&amp;pg=PR15&amp;lpg=PR15&amp;dq=Maja+Winteler-Einstein,+Albert+Einstein&amp;source=web&amp;ots=BWjdGz7UTt&amp;sig=boQnK9ICSMx2xYBzwogQUijXYbU</b>

<b>For more on sister Maja and Albert’s younger years, see:
http://www.einstein-website.de/biographies/einsteinmaja_content.html
and many entries under “Maja Winteler-Einstein—Einstein, Albert” at:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Maja+Winteler-Einstein%2C+Albert+Einstein&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>10. For Einstein age 4, ill, “Einstein, compass”…hidden behind things,” see:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+compass&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>11. For “Einstein as a boy disliking a Prussian-style military parade,” see: Isaacson, p. 21, and:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+boy%2C+military+parade&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>12. For “…he’ll never make a success,” see Clark, p. 10. For “primary teachers as sergeants” see Isaacson, p. 21. On the later scientific value of his slowness as a boy, Einstein wrote: …”that his slow development and backwardness aided him in developing his theories. The normal adult never thinks about space and time. These are thoughts that he has thought about when he was a child. But since my intellectual development was retarded, as a result of which I began to wonder about space and time only when I had already grown up. Naturally, I could go deeper into the problem than a child with normal abilities.”
Sources:
http://www.jewishmag.com/59mag/einstein/einstein.htm
and:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+school%2C+He+will+never+amount+to+much.&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234&amp;aq=t</b>

<b>13. Isaacson, pp. 17-18.</b>

<b>14. On Talmey: It was an old Jewish custom to invite a poor student to family meals, as depicted in Sholem Aleichim’s (1859-1916) Fiddler on the Roof (film) when milkman Teyve invites the traveling university student to a Friday evening meal. See: Isaacson, pp. 18, 19-20, 23, 82, 294-295; and
http://www.chem.harvard.edu/herschbach/Einstein_Student.pdf</b>

<b>15. Aaron Bernstein (1812-84), People’s Books on Natural Science. Born Max Talmud (Talmud means instruction or the authoritative body of Jewish tradition), his name was changed to Max Talmey when he immigrated to the U.S.</b>

<b>16. Max Talmey, Relativity Theory Simplified and the Formative Period of its Inventor, With an Introduction by George B. Pegram, 1932. Talmud gave Albert a book titled Force and Matter, never imagining that years later Einstein would publish theories of relativity, show that matter could be turned into energy, give the world the famous formula, E =mc2, connect spacetime as one entity, and show that Newton’s gravity was really curved spacetime.</b>

<b>17. For many entries on “Einstein, Talmey,”
see:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Talmey&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>18. Albert left Munich for Pavia, Italy, Dec. 29, 1894.</b>

<b>19. Called Zurich Polytechnic College in this paper for clarity it was founded in 1854, opened in 1855 as Swiss Federation of Technology, known familiarly as ETH, its German abbreviation. It has always been highly ranked academically with 21 Nobel Laureates associated with it as students or faculty. Albert’s first born son Hans Albert Einstein (1904-73) also attended ETH and received his Ph.D. in technical sciences there in 1936. See: Fox &amp; Keck, pp. 49-52;
and:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETH_Zurich</b>

<b>20. Gustav Maier was the family friend who got Einstein the age waiver to take his first Zurich Polytechnic entrance exam. Maier’s banking firm in Ulm, Germany, had been located on the same street as Einstein’s grandfather’s featherbed factory.
See:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E02E2DB123BF937A25751COA962948260&amp;sec=health&amp;spon=&amp;pagewanted=print
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E02E2DB123BF937A25751COA962948260&amp;sec=health&amp;spon=&amp;pagewanted=print</b>

<b>21. Einstein’s first (failed) entrance exam dates were Oct. 8-14, 1895.</b>

<b>22. Pestalozzi’s world wide influence included John Dewey’s (1859-1952) U.S. child-centered progressive school movement.</b>

<b>23. Einstein added to this thought question (at age 16): …”Of course, such a thing is impossible.” Isaacson, p. 26.</b>

<b>24. Jost Winteler (1846-1929) was school principal and history and Greek professor. Another Winteler daughter Anna later married Albert’s close friend Micheleangelo Besso. The Winteler son, Paul, later married Albert’s sister Maja, forming a life-long Einstein-Winteler connection.</b>

<b>25. For many entries on “Einstein, Winteler,”
see:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Winteler&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234 &lt;http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Winteler&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234&gt;</b>

<b>26. Einstein’s essay on his future plans was written in faulty French. See: Isaacson, p. 31.</b>

<b>27. For entries on Prof. Heinrich Weber, see
(1): http://www-history.mcs.standrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Weber_Heinrich.html</b>

<b>(2): http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Heinrich+Weber&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
&lt;http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Heinrich+Weber&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234&gt;</b>

<b>28. For “Einstein, Marie Winteler,” her despondency, breakdown, and recovery after Einstein broke off their romance, and on her later marriage and life,
see:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Marie+Winteler&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Marie+Winteler&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>29. Albert called Mileva “Dollie”; she called him “Johnnie.” See Isaacson index for many entries under Maric, Mileva. For other entries under “Einstein, Mileva Maric:”
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Mileva+Maric&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Mileva+Maric&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>For New York Times articles on Mileva Maric:
http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?frow=0&amp;n=10&amp;srcht=s&amp;query=Mileva+Maric&amp;srchst=nyt&amp;submit.x=34&amp;submit.y=13&amp;submit=sub&amp;hdlquery=&amp;bylquery=&amp;daterange=full&amp;mon1=01&amp;day1=01&amp;year1=1981&amp;mon2=02&amp;day2=11&amp;year2=2008
and: http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?frow=0&amp;n=10&amp;srcht=s&amp;query=Mileva+Maric&amp;srchst=nyt&amp;submit.x=34&amp;submit.y=13&amp;submit=sub&amp;hdlquery=&amp;bylquery=&amp;daterange=full&amp;mon1=01&amp;day1=01&amp;year1=1981&amp;mon2=02&amp;da</b>

<b>(3) Also from New York Times on Mileva Maric:
http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?query=Mileva+Maric&amp;srchst=g&amp;submit.x=12&amp;submit.y=9
and: http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?query=Mileva+Maric&amp;srchst=g&amp;submit.x=12&amp;submit.y=9</b>

<b>30. Isaacson, p. 42.</b>

<b>31. Ibid., p. 34.</b>

<b>32. Ibid., p. 35. Einstein ignored Prof. Jean Pernet’s lab instructions, caused a lab explosion, which injured Einstein’s right hand.</b>

<b>33. Ibid., p. 35. Math Prof. Minkowski later remarked that Einstein was: Q “…a lazy dog [who] never bothers about mathematics at all.” Ironically in 1907, 7 years after Albert graduated from Zurich Polytechnic, Prof. Minkowski developed the mathematical framework that made Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity more acceptable to scientists. Prof Minkowski said sometime after 1905: “For me [Einstein's work] came as a tremendous surprise… for in his student days Einstein had been a lazy sluggard [Faulpelz]. He never bothered about mathematics at all.”
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Minkowki</b>

<b>34. Micheleangelo Besso (1873-1955), a mechanical engineer, 6 years older than Einstein, was Einstein’s lifelong friend, a sounding board for Einstein’s ideas, and acted as an elder brother in Einstein’s troubled marriage to and divorce from Mileva Maric. Besso and his wife Anna née Winteler Besso also helped care for the Einstein’s two sons.</b>

<b>Einstein and Besso both played the violin and had similar science interests. They met while Einstein boarded with Aarau Cantonal high school’s principal Jost Winteler whose older daughter Anna Lee married Besso in 1898. The Bessos moved to Milan, Italy, where he was an electrical society’s consultant until Einstein, then working at the Bern Swiss Patent Office, knowing of a vacancy, urged Besso to successfully apply.</b>

<b>Reflecting on Besso’s death shortly before Einstein’s own death (April 18, 1955), he wrote to Besso’s son and wife, marveling that Besso had lived so long and happily in harmony with his wife, “an undertaking in which I twice failed rather miserably.” Isaacson, p. 540.</b>

<b>35. Marcel Grossmann, whose father owned a factory near Zurich, later helped Einstein in two turning points of his life; first, by persuading his father to speak to the Swiss Patent Office director about Einstein’s abilities and need for a job. This led to Einstein’s Patent Office job during1902-09. Secondly, then math Prof. Marcel Grossman taught Einstein during 1911-12 (both then taught at Zurich Polytechnic) the special math for curved space Einstein needed for his 1915 General Theory of Relativity. For many entries on “Einstein, Marcel Grossmann,
see:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Marcel+Grossmann&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Marcel+Grossmann&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>36. Albert Einstein’s final exam score at Zurich Polytechnic was 4.9 out of 6, allowing him to graduate with a Diploma on July 28, 1900. Mileva’s Maric’s failing score was 4 out of 6. Source: White &amp; Gribble pp. 40, 49.</b>

<b>37. Isaacson, p. 61 and:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/einstein/bodanis.html</b>

<b>38. Shortened letter from full versions in: Overbye, p. 72, and
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/einstein/bodanis.html</b>

<b>39. Neither Marie Winteler nor Mileva Maric were Jewish.</b>

<b>40. For scholarly investigation of Albert Einstein-Mileva Mirac’s love child, see: Michele Zackheim. Einstein’s Daughter, The Search for Lieserl. NY: Penguin Putnam, 1999. See also Isaacson, p. 66.</b>

<b>41. Isaacson, Chap. 4, “The Lovers, ” especially p. 66.</b>

<b>42. Ibid. Mileva Maric’s close friend in Serbia was Helene Kaufler Savic. See: Zackheim’s book.</b>

<b>43. Isaacson, Chap 4. For a photo of Einstein and two “Olympia Academy” students, Conrad Habicht (1876-1958) and Maurice Solovine (1875-1958),
see:
http://www.einstein-website.de/z_biography-e.html</b>

<b>44. These self-named Olympia Academy avant garde rebels read and discussed classics, including philosophers Spinoza on God in nature and David Hume (1711-76) on skepticism. They discussed scientists Austrian physicist Ernst Mach (1838-1916), French mathematician Henri Poincaré (1854-1912), both of whose works influenced Albert’s relativity theories of 1905 and 1915. Isaacson, pp. 79-84, lists other authors and books read by Olympia Academy students.</b>

<b>45. Marcel Grossman first told Einstein of the possible Swiss Patent Office position at Bern in April 1901. Einstein applied for the post in Dec. 1901, was offered the post on June 16, 1902, and started work there on June 23, 1902. His job was confirmed as permanent on Sept. 1904. He was promoted to Technical Expert Second Class on April 1, 1906. He resigned July 6, 1909, to become University of Zurich physics professor. For many entries on “Einstein, Patent Office, Bern, Switzerland,”
see:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Patent+Office%2C+Bern%2C+Switzerland&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and: http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Patent+Office%2C+Bern%2C+Switzerland&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>46. For entries on “Einstein, Patent Office, Bern,”
see:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Patent+Office%2C+Bern&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and: http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Patent+Office%2C+Bern&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and:
http://www.einsteinyear.org/facts/timeline</b>

<b>47. Albert Einstein’s first son, Hans Albert Einstein, born May 14, 1904, who died in 1973, is mentioned in Footnote 19 above.</b>

<b>48. First 1905 photo electric effect paper: Albert Einstein, “On a Heuristic [i.e., Hypothetical] Point of View Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light,” Annalen der Physik, Vol. 17 (June 9, 1905), pp. 132-148. For details of all Einstein 1905 “Miracle Year” published writings,
see:
http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teaching/2509_Einstein_1905.html
http://www.pitt.edu/%7Ejdnorton/teaching/2509_Einstein_1905.html
and:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+1905%2C+Miracle+Year&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+1905%2C+Miracle+Year&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>49. Second 1905 “Brownian Movement” paper: Albert Einstein, “On the Movement of Small Particles Suspended in Stationary Liquids Required by the Molecular-Kinetic Theory of Heat,” Annalen der Physik, Vol. 17 (July 18, 1905), pp. 549-560.</b>

<b>50. Third 1905 Special Relativity paper: Albert Einstein, “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,” Annalen der Physik (Annals of Physics, Vol. 17 (Sept. 26, 1905), pp. 891-921.</b>

<b>When Einstein finished his Special Relativity paper he gave his 31 scribbled pages to wife Mileva Maric to check for math errors and fell exhausted into bed. The background and Einstein’s thought processes on this third Special Relativity paper are explained in Overbye, Chap. 10; in Isaacson, Chapters 5 and 6;
And:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/einstein/kaku.html</b>

<b>51. For many entries on “Einstein, E=MC2,”
see:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+E%3DMC2&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and: http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+E%3DMC2&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>52. Isaacson, p. 140.</b>

<b>53. Few before Einstein made such imaginative leaps. The mystery is how–mostly alone by reading, study, and thought experiment–during 10 hectic troubled years ages 16 to 26, Einstein took insights from earlier scientists’ findings and put them together in remarkable ways in his 1905 papers.</b>

<b>We may never know the sources of Einstein’s rare intelligence, genius, boldness to be, do, and think differently. His father had a markedly careful way of looking at things from every possible angle. His mother was independent and determined. His Jewish heritage may account for his reverence for an all-knowing God who works through nature’s wonders.  His early troubled life, the temper of his time, his minority status as a Jew among Christians may all have spurred his drive for thinking about and determination to account for nature’s wonders.</b>

<b>54. Einstein’s University of Zurich Ph.D. Dissertation (1905): “A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions,” 1905, Annalen der Physik, 19 (1906), pp. 289-305, is his least impressive but most cited Einstein publication because of its usefulness. It deals simply with how sugar particles are suspended in a fluid, but has been surprisingly applicable to the way sand particles get stirred up in cement mixers, the properties of cow’s milk, and the way fine particles of dust and droplets of liquid (aerosols) are suspended in clouds.
Source:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14019054.400-the-everyday-world-of-einstein-what-did-albert-want-with-acup-of-sweet-coffee-a-cement-mixer-and-a-dirty-cloud-.html
and:
http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teaching/2509_Einstein_1905.html
and:
http://www.pitt.edu/%7Ejdnorton/teaching/2509_Einstein_1905.html</b>

<b>55. The “few” students attending Einstein’s early morning University of Bern lectures included his friend Michele Besso and his sister Maja, then studying for the University of Zurich Ph.D. in Romance Languages. White &amp; Gribble, p. 75.</b>

<b>56. University of Berlin physicist Max Planck, 21 years older, was Einstein’s father figure. Planck’s assistant Max von Lau became Einstein’s helpful friend. Planck was the first leading physicist to accept and soon lecture on Einstein’s relativity theory. As Annalen der Physik editor Planck published Einstein’s 1905 papers (also earlier and later papers).</b>

<b>University of Berlin Profs. Planck and Walther Nernst (1864-1941), both went in person to persuade Einstein to work in Berlin (1914-33).  Unlike Newton and James C. Maxwell, who saw light as a wave, Planck was the first to consider light as rapidly moving discrete particles, an idea which Einstein incorporated in his 1905 photo-electric effect paper.  Planck met with Hitler to argue, unsuccessfully, that the Nazi campaign against the Jews hurt German science. Planck’s son was killed by the Gestapo in 1944 for being involved in an unsuccessful Hitler assassination plot. Source: Fox &amp; Keck, pp. 216-219.</b>

<b>57. Einstein’s sickly second son Eduard Einstein (1910-65) was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1930 and died at age 55 in a Zurich mental asylum. As caretaker, his mother Mileva Maric Einstein bore most of the emotional burden, often helped by the Bessos, while Einstein paid the financial cost.</b>

<b>58. Einstein first met at the First Solvay Science Conference, Brussels, Belgium, Oct. 1911, such world renown scientists as France’s Marie Curie, French mathematician Jules Henri Poincaré (1854-1912), Germany’s Max Planck, New Zealand born Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937), and Dutch physicist Henrik A. Lorentz (1853-1928).</b>

<b>Of Einstein’s relativity theory Planck wrote: “If Einstein’s theory should prove to be correct, as I expect it will, he will be considered the Copernicus of the twentieth century.” Source: Aczel, p. 27.</b>

<b>Asked to evaluate Einstein as possible Zurich Polytechnic physics professor, Marie Curie wrote: “I much admire the work which Einstein has published…and think…his work as being in the first rank.”</b>

<b>In this same connection J.H. Poincaré wrote of Albert: “The future will show more and more, the worth of Einstein, and the university which is able to capture this young master is certain of gaining much honour from the operation.” White &amp; Gribble, p. 109 and Isaacson, pp.168-171.</b>

<b>59. In Berlin during 1914-33 Einstein was also a member of the Prussian Academy of Science and directed research at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. For many entries on “Einstein, University of Berlin,”
see:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+University+of+Berlin&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+University+of+Berlin&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>60. For Einstein’s “living conditions” instructions to his first wife Mileva Maric and of his affairs with other women,
see: http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/einstein/life/family.php</b>

<b>61. Elsa Einstein married textile trader Max Lowenthal (1864-1914) in 1896 and divorced him in 1908. For Elsa Einstein biography, see: http://www.einstein-website.de/biographies/einsteinelsa.html</b>

<b>62. An abortive attempt was made to photo-test a summer 1914 eclipse for Einstein best seen in the Crimea, Russia by Berlin’s Royal Prussian Observatory assistant Erwin Freundlich (1885-1964). Freundlich got to the Crimea with photo equipment just as World War I erupted, was captured as a spy, and was luckily released in an exchange of prisoners. This failed attempt strangely helped Albert for he had made a mistake in math so that his degrees of arc of bent-light was slightly off. Had this abortive photo expedition been successful his General Relativity Theory might have been discredited. See: Isaacson, index under Freundlich, Erwin Finlay.</b>

<b>63. Because of WW I communications disruption Einstein sent his 1915 General Relativity paper to University of Leyden (Netherlands) astronomy Prof. Willem de Sitter (1872-1935), who forwarded it via Finland to England’s Cambridge University astronomer Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882-1944). Eddington, soon a convinced relativity believer, helped prove Einstein’s General Relativity theory true in a 1919 eclipse, resulting in Einstein’s near-instant world fame. Source: Clark, pp. 208-09f. For “Einstein, Eddington” entries,
see:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Eddington&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Eddington&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>64. For entries on the startling results of “Einstein, 1919 eclipse,”
see: Bodanis interview in:
http://www.panmacmillan.com/interviews/displayPage.asp?PageID=3365
and:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+1919+eclipse&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+1919+eclipse&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>65. Ibid., for headline news coverage of “Einstein, 1919 eclipse.”</b>

<b>66. Nominated annually since 1910 for the Nobel Prize for Physics, Einstein’s selection was bypassed because the selection committee thought his relativity theories might be wrong and by anti-Jewish prejudice, led by former (1905) Nobel Physics Prize winner Philipp A. Lenard (1862-1947), a virulent anti-Semite and later dedicated Nazi.</b>

<b>Einstein’s Nobel Prize selection was also delayed after 1919 photo eclipse proof of his relativity theory because it contradicted over 200 years of Newtonian physics. No physics prize was given in 1921, allowing the committee to compromise, giving the 1922 prize to Danish physicist Niels H.D. Bohr (1885-1962) and the 1921 prize to Einstein, not for his still controversial relativity theories, but for his practical 1905 photoelectric effect theory.</b>

<b>knowing that Einstein planned a lecture tour in Japan, University of Berlin friend Max von Laue alerted Einstein about a special honor in December 1922 but Einstein, annoyed at the long delay and showing indifference, went on to Japan.</b>

<b>Diplomats had to sort out the protocol problem: German ambassador to Sweden Rudolf Nadolny accepted the Nobel Prize for Einstein, the Swedish ambassador to Germany handed Einstein the Nobel medal on his return to Japan, and Einstein, ignoring the fact that he had been awarded the prize for his photo electric effect theory, instead gave his Nobel speech, July 1923 on relativity. Sources: White &amp; Gribbin, pp. 100, 125, 165-166, 179-180. Fox &amp;Keck, pp. 190-195.</b>

<b>For entries on “Einstein, Nobel Prize for Physics for 1921″   and for “Einstein, Rudolf Nadolny,”
see:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Rudolf+Nadolny&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234&amp;q=Einstein%2C+Noble+Prize+in+Physics+for+1921&amp;btnG=Search
and:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234&amp;q=Einstein%2C+Noble+Prize+in+Physics+for+1921&amp;btnG=Search</b>

<b>67. For entries on “Einstein, Atom Bomb,
see:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+atom+bomb&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and: http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+atom+bomb&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>68. For key Einstein events in the U.S., 1933-55, 22 years:</b>

<b>(1) Einstein’s first U.S. visit, April 2-May 30, 1921, with Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann (1874-1952, Russian-born, British subject) to raise funds for what is now Hebrew University of Jerusalem (which still benefits from owning his papers and has commercial copyright use of his name). Einstein was given a hero’s welcome in NYC and lectured in Washington, D.C. and Cleveland, Ohio.</b>

<b>(2) He returned to the U.S. briefly in 1931 to lecture at California Institute of Technology (Caltech), visited Hollywood, CA, where he was cheered as a rock star when he appeared with Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977) at the opening of Chaplin’s City Lights film. When Einstein asked what the cheering meant, Chaplin replied: they cheer me because they all understand me; they cheer you because no one understands you. For entries for “Einstein, Millikan, Caltech,
see:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Millikan%2C+Caltech&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>(3) Why Einstein worked at the Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, 1933 to his death in 1955, 22 years:  About 1929 wealthy Newark, NJ, department store owner Louis Bamberger (1855-1944) and his sister Caroline née Bamberger Fuld asked educator and philanthropic foundation executive Abraham Flexner’s (1866-1959) advice on the best use of a $5 million philanthropic gift.</b>

<b>Flexner urged them to create an Institute for Advanced Study where eminent scholars free from lecturing and other duties could explore new knowledge. The idea was modeled on Kaiser Wilhelm II Institutes some 20 years earlier (Einstein headed the one in Berlin during 1917-33). Practical results from these research institutes helped make Germany a world leader in industries related to chemistry and science.</b>

<b>Flexner, who would later site his Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, NJ (near but independent of Princeton University), was in Pasadena, CA, early 1932, to confer with California Institute of California (Caltech) chief scientist Robert Millikan (1868-1953) about recruiting European and U.S. scientists. Millikan told Flexner to speak to Einstein then at Caltech.</b>

<b>Einstein, then on his second annual short term Caltech lecturing visit (during 1931, 1932, 1933), became interested in Flexner’s Institute for Advanced Study. They talked again in Oxford, England, late spring, 1932; and again two months later at Einstein’s summer home in Carputh near Berlin. Einstein agreed to join the Institute for Advanced Study initially for 6 months.</b>

<b>In December 1932, to escape Hitler’s holocaust (Hitler became Chancellor of Germany Jan. 30 1933), Einstein fled Germany to work at the Institute for Advance Study, Princeton, NJ. He lived nearby at 112 Mercer Street, became a U.S. citizen (while retaining Swiss citizenship) on Oct. 30, 1940, and died in 1955.</b>

<b>For entries on “Einstein, Flexner,”see:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Flexner&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Flexner&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>For Franklin &amp; Betty Parker, “Abraham and Simon Flexner, Medical Education Reformers,” access any one of the following 3 blogs:
http://bfparker.sulekha.com/blog/post/2007/06/abraham-and-simon-flexner-medical-education-reformers.htm
(or): http://bfparker.mindsay.com/abraham_and_simon_flexner_medical_education_reformersby_franklinbetty_parker.mws
(or):  http://bfparker.shoutpost.com/archives/2007/June</b>

<b>(4) Einstein’s Aug. 2, 1939 letter to Pres. F.D. Roosevelt warning of Nazi’s atom bomb progress: Einstein in Princeton, N.J., first heard in late 1938 from Danish physicist Niels Bohr (1885-1962) that German scientists were nearing success in splitting the uranium atom and making a bomb of unimaginable destruction.</b>

<b>This information was confirmed to Einstein in mid July 1939 while on vacation in long Island, NY, by visiting Jewish physicist Leo Szilard (1898-1964), who had also fled Nazi Germany to the U.S. Szilard and another physicist drafted and prevailed on Einstein to sign a letter to Pres. Roosevelt, Aug. 2, 1939, warning him of the danger</b>

<b>The letter and attending reports on it languished in U.S. bureaucratic files until Pearl Harbor when British intelligence, which knew of the danger, pressured the U.S. military to create the secret Manhattan Project leading to the U.S. atom bombs dropped on Japan that ended WW II.</b>

<b>See footnote 67 for entries on “Einstein, Atom Bomb.” See indexes under “Roosevelt, Franklin” in Overbye, Fox &amp; Keck (especially pp. 9-14), White &amp; Gribbon, Clark, Hoffmann, Isaacson. For entries on “Einstein, Roosevelt,”
see:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Roosevelt&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Roosevelt&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>Best Albert Einstein Internet Sources</b>

<b>1. “Albert Einstein, 1879-1955.” Library of Congress, many entries on 10 pp.:
http://search.loc.gov:8765/query.html?col=loc&amp;qt=Alfred+Einstein&amp;qp=url%3A%2Frr%2F+url%3A%2Fcfbook%2Furl%3A%2Fpoetry%2F+url%3A%2Ffolklife%2F&amp;submit.x=13&amp;submit.y=13</b>

<b>2. Albert Einstein, 1879-1955.” 39 clips of film stock footage libraries:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Albert+Einstein%2C+stock+film+footage&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>3. World Year of Physics 2005: Einstein in the 21st Century:
Physics groups world-wide designated 2005 the “World Year of Physics, honoring the centennial of Einstein’s 1905 “Year of Miracles” and the 50th year since his death in 1955. Over 400 world wide celebratory events were held including conferences, museum exhibits, webcasts, plays, poetry reading, and other events.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/12/opinion/12horgan.html
and
http://physics2005.org/international.html</b>

<b>4. Albert Einstein Quotes/Articles on God, Religion, Ethics and Science
http://atheism.about.com/od/einsteingodreligion/tp/EinsteinGodReligionScience.htm
and:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&amp;ie=ISO-8859-1&amp;q=Albert+Einstein%2C+God%2C+Religion%2C+Ethics&amp;btnG=Google+Search
and
http://atheism.about.com/sitesearch.htm?terms=Albert%20Einstein&amp;SUName=atheism&amp;TopNode=2928&amp;type=1
and: http://atheism.about.com/sitesearch.htm?terms=Albert%20Einstein&amp;SUName=atheism&amp;TopNode=2928&amp;type=1
and:
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/quotes_einstein.html</b>

<b>5. Albert Einstein Quotes (general): http://quotations.about.com/od/stillmorefamouspeople/a/AlbertEinstein2.htm</b>

<b>6. Albert Albert Quotes with sources and links to his life and contributions):
http://everything2.com/index.pl</b>

<b>7. Albert Einstein photographs:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+photos&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and:&lt;
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+photos&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>8. For Einstein books, articles, photos, and archival finding aids: http://www.aip.org/servlet/plainHistory?collection=HISTORY&amp;queryText=Albert+Einstein&amp;SEARCH+BUTTON.x=18&amp;SEARCH+BUTTON.y=7
and: http://www.aip.org/servlet/plainHistory?collection=HISTORY&amp;queryText=Albert+Einstein&amp;SEARCH+BUTTON.x=18&amp;SEARCH+BUTTON.y=7</b>

<b>9. PBS (Public Broadcasting System, TV) entries on “Albert Einstein”: http://www.pbs.org/search/search_results.html?q=Albert+Einstein&amp;btnG.x=10&amp;btnG.y=7
and: http://www.pbs.org/search/search_results.html?q=Albert+Einstein&amp;btnG.x=10&amp;btnG.y=7</b>

<b>10. Science writers on Albert Einstein:</b>

<b>(1): John Horgan, science writing program, Stevens Institute of Technology, NJ, articles on Einstein:
http://www.google.com/search?q=John+Horgan%2C+Einstein&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234&amp;aq=t
and: http://www.google.com/search?q=John+Horgan%2C+Einstein&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234&amp;aq=t</b>

<b>(2): Books on Albert Einstein by Don Howard, History of Science, Notre Dame University:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Don+Howard%2C+Einstein&amp;sourcenavclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and
http://www.google.com/search?q=Don+Howard%2C+Einstein&amp;sourcenavclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>(3): Lee Smolin, Theoretical Physics, Pennsylvania State University, articles, books on Einstein:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Lee+Smolin%2C+Einstein&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and
http://www.google.com/search?q=Lee+Smolin%2C+Einstein&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>(4): livescience.com &lt;http://livescience.com has entries on Einstein, including “Will There Ever be Another Einstein?”:
http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/ap_050418_einstein.html</b>

<b>11. For “Einstein, Federal Bureau of Investigation” massive report, see:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Federal+Bureau+of+Investigation&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and: http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Federal+Bureau+of+Investigation&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>12. For “Albert Einstein Timelines and Chronology,” see:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Albert+Einstein+Timelines+and+Chronology&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and: http://www.google.com/search?q=Albert+Einstein+Timelines+and+Chronology&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>13. For About.com &lt;http://About.com&gt;  search on “Albert Einstein,” see:
http://search.about.com/fullsearch.htm?terms=Albert%20Einstein</b>

<b>14. For entries on “Albert Einstein death,”
see:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Marie+Winteler&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Marie+Winteler&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>END OF REFERENCES. Email corrections, questions to: bfparker@frontiernet.net</b>

<b>About the Authors</b>

<b>1. For biographical account: “Betty &amp; Franklin Parker Looking Back Since 1946,”
access:   http://bfparker.blogster.com/betty_franklin_parker_looking.html
or: http://ourstory.com/story.html?v=10919
or: http://www.progressiveu.org/182455-betty-franklin-parker-looking-back-since-1946-57-years-of-a-good-idea-thanksgiving-2007-bfparker-frontiernet-net
or:  http://bootlog.com/index.php?cat=travelogs&amp;aut=bfparker
or: http://bootlog.com/index.php?cat=travelogs&amp;aut=bfparker</b>

<b>2. For a list of 153 of authors’ publications go to: http://www.worldcat.org
type in: Franklin Parker, 1921- and you should get the following URL:
http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=Parker%2C+Franklin%2C+1921-%2C&amp;=Search&amp;qt=results_page
or:
http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=Parker%2C+Franklin%2C+1921-%2C&amp;=Search&amp;qt=results_page</b>

<b>3. To access free E-Book full contents of Franklin Parker, <i>George Peabody, A Biography</i>. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1995 rev. edn., go to:
http://books.google.com/books?id=OPIbk-ZPnF4C&amp;dq=franklin+parker&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;source=web&amp;ots=qxV3RqTk1k&amp;sig=sXAmDL_CyCYd-Sl0n_IRl7g1S1I#PPP1,M1
or:
http://books.google.com/books?id=OPIbk-ZPnF4C&amp;dq=franklin+parker&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;source=web&amp;ots=qxV3RqTk1k&amp;sig=sXAmDL_CyCYd-Sl0n_IRl7g1S1I#PPP1,M1</b>

<b>Corrections, comments: bfparker@frontiernet.net END OF MANUSCRIPT <b>How Albert Einstein (1879-1955) Changed the Way We See the Universe,” by Franklin and Betty J. Parker, bfparker@frontiernet.net     Review of Walter Isaacson’s Einstein, <i>His Life and Universe</i>, NY: Simon &amp; Schuster, 2007, and related sources, given March 17, 2008, Uplands Retirement Village. Pleasant Hill, TN.</b>

<b>This is the true story of an independent loner, largely self-taught, a high school dropout who failed his technical college entrance exam, entered that technical college by the skin of his teeth, irritated his professors, barely graduated, and—by not bowing to authority—had to live hand-to-mouth on low pay substitute teaching for 18 months.  In 1905, while a lowly Swiss Patent Office clerk, he published 5 papers which changed the way we see the universe.  How did he do it?</b>

<b>We are not scientists.  What follows is our laypersons’ understanding of journalist-author Walter Isaacson’s 2007 bestseller Einstein, <i>His Life and Universe</i>.1  Author Isaacson, Time magazine’s managing editor when his staff voted Einstein the most important person of the 20th century,2 now heads the Aspen Institute, a think tank for executives, Washington, D.C.3</b>

<b>Recently opened Albert Einstein archives account for Isaacson’s Einstein biography, plus another biography by German science writer Jürgen Neffe.4   Over 500 Einstein biographies exist.  An Einstein film based on Isaacson’s book is planned plus other Einstein film projects.5</b>

<b>This interest in Einstein, we think, comes from his newly opened papers.  While known as a scientific genius, few people know of his troubled early life; fewer know how he changed the way we see the universe.</b>

<b>Albert’s father Hermann Einstein (1847-1902), at age 29 in Bavaria, Germany, married Pauline Koch (1858-1920), age 18 in 1876, both non-observing Jews. Pauline, his mother, a prosperous grain dealer’s daughter, was cultured, well read, a pianist and music lover. Hermann, whom she dominated, was generous, thoughtful, a devoted husband and father who failed in business.6</b>

<b>Albert Einstein was born March 14, 1879, in Ulm, near Stuttgart, Germany; born into a world where Isaac Newton’s (1642-1727) laws of motion and gravity had satisfactorily explained earth’s place in the universe over 200 years earlier.  No one then dreamed that anyone, let alone Albert Einstein, would add significantly to Newton’s laws.</b>

<b>Albert grew up among electric generators and motors. His uncle, engineer-inventor Jakob Einstein (1850-1912), introduced electricity into southern German towns, as Thomas Edison (1847-1931) did in New York City.7  Pauline Einstein, with a Koch family loan, encouraged husband Hermann’s partnership with Jakob. After Albert’s birth, the Einsteins moved (1880) from Ulm to Munich for better business opportunity.</b>

<b>Albert’s big head at birth and his being a late talker evoked fear that he was abnormal. Albert later told a biographer, “My parents were worried because I started to talk comparatively late, and they consulted a doctor….”8</b>

<b>When Albert was 2 his only sibling sister was born, Marie, called “Maja” Einstein (1881-1951).  She later described him as quiet and introspective.9</b>

<b>When Albert was 4 and ill, his father gave him a compass to play with. Albert later wrote: “When I saw…[its needle always point north, no matter how I turned it], the fact that it behaved in such a fixed way changed my understanding of the world. Until then, I thought that one thing had to touch another to make it move…. I realized that something deeply hidden had to lie behind things.” 10 These thoughts were an early hint of his lifelong search for unity in nature.</b>

<b>Albert was kept at home until age 7, taught the 3 Rs by a tutor, then enrolled in a nearby Catholic primary school, ages 7 to 9, 1885-88. He did well academically, received Catholic religious instruction in school plus state-required private Jewish instruction from a relative at home.</b>

<b>Taken as a little boy to watch a Prussian military parade, he cried out in horror: “I don’t want to be [regimented like]…those poor people.”11  He disliked school discipline and rote learning, especially in secondary school at Munich’s Luitpold Gymnasium, 6 years, ages 9 to 15 (1888-94).</b>

<b>Good in science and math, less interested in other subjects, he irritated some teachers by questioning their knowledge.  Asked about Albert’s potential, his headmaster said: “…he’ll never make a success.” Told by a teacher that he was not welcome in class, Albert said he had done nothing wrong.  His teacher said: “Yes, …but you sit there in the back row and smile and your mere presence here spoils the respect of the class for me.”  Albert later called his primary teachers sergeants, his gymnasium teachers lieutenants.12</b>

<b>Uncle Jakob taught him algebra. Albert mastered calculus by age 12. Reading math and science books reinforced his appreciation of orderliness in nature. He later said: “As a boy of 12, I was thrilled to see that it was possible to find out truth by reasoning alone, without the help of any outside experience.”13</b>

<b>Piano and violin lessons, urged by his mother, made him a lifelong violinist. He saw harmony and unity in music, science, and nature.</b>

<b>Max Talmey (1867-1941), age 21, a poor Polish Jewish medical student, invited to Thursday night dinners from 1889 for a few years, shared with Albert, from the age of 10, table talk on science, math, and philosophy.14</b>

<b>Talmey gave Albert a popular natural science book series describing current scientific experiments.15  The books were full of imaginative, creative what-ifs, leading Albert at 16 to ask: “What if I could ride alongside a beam of light?”  This question eventually led to his 1905 and 1915 theories of relativity.</b>

<b>Asked years later (1921) what he thought of those science books, Albert said: very good books, “[They] exerted a great influence on my whole development.”16</b>

<b>Talmey, spurring Albert’s curiosity at an impressionable age, remarked in his 1932 book about young Albert’s “exceptional intelligence [which enabled him to discuss with me, a college graduate,] subjects far beyond the comprehension of so young a child.”17</b>

<b>Albert, religious before age 10, became a doubter from age 12.  He read with Talmey philosopher Immanuel Kant’s (1724-1804) <i>Critique of Pure Reason</i>, discussed Kant’s belief that the universe can be understood by thought alone. Albert read and agreed with philosopher Benedict Spinoza (1632-77) that God works through nature’s orderliness.</b>

<b>Business failure caused the Einsteins to move to Italy near their northern Italy partner firm in Milan, then to nearby Pavia. Albert at 15 needed 3 more years to complete secondary school. His parents decided he should remain in Munich where an Einstein relative would look after him until he graduated.</b>

<b>Lonely, unhappy, Albert looked for a way out of the Munich Gymnasium, which he disliked, knowing some teachers disliked him. He also dreaded German compulsory military service at age 17, two years ahead.</b>

<b>Albert, alone, age 15, asked the family physician for a letter stating that because of isolation from his family he was suffering from nervous exhaustion and needed the bracing air of northern Italy. From his math teacher he got a letter listing his high math scores.</b>

<b>This high school dropout took a train to Pavia, Italy,18 arrived unexpectedly at his parents’ home, and told them why he had dropped out of school and how he planned to continue his education.</b>

<b>He would study on his own, take the entrance exam in autumn 1895 to enter the highly regarded Polytechnic College in Zurich, Switzerland,19 which did not require secondary school graduation if an applicant passed its high entrance exams.  He also said: I want to renounce my German citizenship.</b>

<b>His concerned father prudently delayed submitting renunciation of German citizenship forms until Albert in Switzerland had applied for Swiss citizenship.  Albert was stateless  from 1896 until granted Swiss citizenship in 1901.</b>

<b>Helping in the family’s Pavia shop with its electric lighting equipment, Albert impressed Uncle Jakob by quickly solving electrical problems. Uncle Jakob assured everyone: “You will hear from him yet.”</b>

<b>In spring and summer 1895 Albert hiked the Alps and Apennines from Pavia to Genoa to see his maternal Uncle Julius Koch. He visited art and other culture centers, delighted at Italian friendliness, so unlike the stern Germans.</b>

<b>Reading physics textbooks helped him prepare for the Zurich Polytechnic entrance exams. He would be 16 when he took the Polytechnic entrance test intended for age 18 and older. A family friend got him a waiver of the age requirement.20</b>

<b>Albert passed the Zurich Polytechnic test in math and science but failed other subjects. Polytechnic Director Albin Herzog (1852-1909) suggested that Albert take a final secondary school year of guided study at nearby Aarau high school, whose graduates were automatically admitted to the Zurich Polytechnic.21</b>

<b>Aarau Cantonal High School, 25 miles west of Zurich, influenced by progressive Swiss educator Johann Pestalozzi (1746-1827),22 was teacher-friendly, student-centered, perfect for Albert.</b>

<b>He later told a friend: “In Aarau I made my first rather childish experiments in thinking that had a direct bearing on the Special [Relativity] Theory. If a person could run after a light wave with the same speed as light, you would have a wave arrangement which could be completely independent of time….”23</b>

<b>He boarded with principal Jost and Rosa Winteler.  Marie, one of their 7 children, was Albert’s first girl friend; she 18, he 16.24</b>

<b>With the Wintelers, Albert developed a quick wit and debonair jesting manner. When not in class or studying or hiking or playing violin duets or flirting with Marie Winteler, he joined the Winteler family’s liberal conversation.25</b>

<b>Graduating from the Aarau Cantonal High School with the second highest grades except in French, he wrote of his future plans as follows:</b>

<b>”…I will enroll in the Zurich Polytechnic….stay…four years [1896-1900] to study mathematics and physics…. I will be a teacher …of these sciences…. ¶[I have a] talent for abstract…thinking…. I am attracted by…the profession of science.”26</b>

<b>Albert enrolled, Oct. 29, 1896, in Zurich Polytechnic’s department preparing secondary school math and physics teachers, headed by Prof. Heinrich Weber (1842-1913).27</b>

<b>Romance came at Zurich Polytechnic with Mileva Maric (1875-1948), the only woman student in this department, from Novi Sad, Serbia, daughter of a wealthy landowner and judge. 28</b>

<b>Mileva, bright in math and physics, determined to succeed, had won top honors in an all-male Serbian scientific school. She at 21, Albert at 17, casual friends, hiked together in the summer of 1897. Albert admired Mileva for her science interest and for being, like himself, a rebel, outsider, survivor.29</b>

<b>Friendship ripened into love. Mileva Maric became, in Walter Isaacson’s words: “Einstein’s muse, partner, lover, wife [16 years, 1903-19]…and [finally] antagonist.”30</b>

<b>In his last two years at Zurich Polytechnic Albert skipped Prof. Heinrich Weber’s physics lectures, disappointed at Weber’s neglecting contemporary physics. Albert was enthralled with James Clerk Maxwell’s (1831-79) books on <i>Electricity and Magnetism</i>, 1873; and <i>Matter and Motion</i>, 1876.</b>

<b>Albert irritated his major professor by addressing him as “Herr Weber” instead of the more respectful “Herr Professor.” Prof. Weber gave Albert a dressing down (1898-99): “You’re a clever boy. But you have one great fault: you’ll never let yourself be told anything.”31</b>

<b>Albert’s other physics professor, Jean Pernet (1845-1902) asked his assistant: “What do you make of Einstein? He always does something different from what I have ordered.” The assistant replied, “He does indeed, Herr Professor, but his solutions are right and the methods he uses are of great interest.”32</b>

<b>Albert focused on physics, less on math. He later regretted skipping math Prof. Hermann Minkowski’s (1864-1909) advanced math lectures.33</b>

<b>Studying what interested him, Albert risked failing final exams. Friends tutored him: Mileva Maric, engineering student Micheleangelo Besso,34 and math major Marcel Grossmann’s (1878-1936) who shared his detailed lecture notes.  Grossmann understood Albert’s independent spirit, recognized Albert’s talents, and told his parents, “This Einstein will one day be a great man.”35</b>

<b>Albert barely passed his final exams. Mileva Maric failed but planned to try again.36   Financial aid from Albert’s family stopped on graduation. His fellow graduates all received coveted teaching jobs or research assistantships. Albert sent out many applications.  No one answered.</b>

<b>Albert complained that Prof. Heinrich Weber’s bad references prevented his getting a job. Mileva attributed his joblessness to anti-Semitism and to his rebel attitude: “You know my sweetheart has a sharp tongue.”37</b>

<b>Today we are shocked that Einstein, an acknowledged genius, could not find an academic job after college graduation. For 18 months his only income was from short term low pay substitute teaching.</b>

<b>Isaacson described Einstein in this jobless period as: “Einstein the Nobody.” His father Hermann, knowing Albert had twice applied unsuccessfully to one professor for an assistantship, wrote that professor, without telling Albert:</b>

<b>”My son Albert, …22…, unhappy with his present lack of position,…[feels] …that he is a burden on us, people of modest means….¶I have taken the liberty of [asking you] to…write him… a few words of encouragement, so that he might recover his joy in living and working. ¶If…you could secure him an Assistant’s position…my gratitude would know no bounds…. Hermann Einstein.” No reply ever came.38</b>

<b>Opposed to Albert’s romance with Mileva Maric, Albert’s mother thought Mileva unsuitable, older, unhealthy, non-Jewish, a foreigner. During summer 1900 family vacation his mother asked Albert, “What will become of your Dollie now?”39</b>

<b>Albert replied: engagement and marriage. His mother wept.  Still worse, she and Albert’s father sent a jointly signed letter to Mileva Maric’s parents listing reasons against the marriage.</b>

<b>At last came a job possibility.  Albert’s friend Marcel Grossmann told his father of Albert’s joblessness. Grossmann’s father spoke to his friend, Swiss Patent Office Director Friedrich Haller (1844-1936). Haller told Albert to apply when a Patent Office job was posted. On this possibility, Albert moved to Bern, the Swiss capital, where the Patent Office was located.</b>

<b>Albert and Mileva had a romantic interlude at Lake Como on the Swiss-Italian border, spring 1901. Mileva wrote Albert she was pregnant. Albert promised to find a job “no matter how humble…[and despite] my scientific goals and my personal vanity.”40</b>

<b>Albert was with his family the summer of 1901 when Mileva retook her failed Zurich Polytechnic final exams. Three months pregnant, sick, her pregnancy a secret, with Albert’s parents opposed to their marriage, Mileva failed again.  Nor was Albert with her when, home in Serbia, she gave birth to a baby girl Lieserl, early Feb. 1902.41</b>

<b>Albert never saw, his parents never knew, the world never knew about Lieserl until 1986 from newly found Einstein family letters. Why the secrecy?  Speculating from Albert’s then troubled situation–he was the jobless, unconventional, near-bohemian father of an illegitimate child, unable to support a family, whose parents opposed his love mate. If he became publicly tarred as immoral he might not get the Swiss Patent Office job.</b>

<b>Mileva, in Serbia, her family helping, cared for the baby, exchanged anxious love letters with Albert, patiently awaited his hoped for job, his promised marriage. Historians speculate that Mileva’s close friend in Serbia took custody of Lieserl, that Lieserl died of scarlet fever.42</b>

<b>Needing money, awaiting the Patent Office job, Albert in a Bern newspaper advertised: “Private lessons in Mathematics and Physics….. Trial lessons free.” Several local students responded.43</b>

<b>Albert’s lectures to the jokingly named “Olympia Academy” students gave way to freewheeling discussions on physics, philosophy, classic books, over food and drink, on country walks, and on mountain hikes.44</b>

<b>Albert was finally appointed Swiss Patent Office Technical Expert Class 3 Provisional (on trial), June 16, 1902.  Director Friedrich Haller told  him: “When you pick up an application think that everything the inventor says is wrong.”  Be critical, vigilant, question every premise, challenge everything–an approach Albert liked. 45</b>

<b>Soon expert in judging patent applications, Albert rushed through the day’s work, did his own thought experiments, hid his notes when visitors or Director Haller approached. The Patent Office job, Albert later wrote: “…enforced my many-sided thinking and also provided important stimuli to…[my] thought[s on physics].”46</b>

<b>Hermann Einstein, 55, dying in Milan, Italy, Oct. 10, 1902, finally gave Albert permission to marry Mileva Maric. He and Mileva were married Jan. 6, 1903, in a civil ceremony attended only by two “Olympia Academy” friends.</b>

<b>With a steady job, income, marriage, regularity, Albert and Mileva had a son, Hans Albert Einstein, born May 14, 1904.47 Albert also had from 1904 as Patent Office co-worker his close friend Michelangelo Besso.  They shared scientific ideas and constantly discussed how mass (or matter), light, space, and time were related.  Between 1901-04 Albert wrote and published reviews of new physics writings and several so called “practice papers.”</b>

<b>Then, in 1905—about ideas he’d puzzled over for years–Albert published four papers plus his doctoral dissertation in the German physics journal, <i>Annalen der Physik</i>.  In time physicists recognized the originality and importance of these papers.</b>

<b>Of this 1905 “Miracle Year” he later wrote: “A storm broke out in my mind.”</b>

<b>First of Albert’s four 1905 papers was on the photo-electric effect of light, long thought to be a wave. Light, Albert wrote, is both a wave and fast-moving particles. When light particles hit certain metals they cause a mysterious release of electrons from the metals.</b>

<b>This photo-electric effect of light is the basis of many light operated devices: some automatic door openers, compact disks,  CAT scans using x-ray imaging for cancer, etc.</b>

<b>Albert’s photo-electric effect paper also helped establish Quantum Physics, the study of the strange behavior of electrons circling protons inside atoms. This photo-electric effect paper, because it was verifiable and practical, won Albert the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics.48</b>

<b>Albert’s second 1905 paper explained “Brownian Movement,” named after Scottish botanist Robert Brown (1773-1858), who found in 1827 under a microscope that tiny grains of pollen placed in water  moved about irregularly.</b>

<b>Seventy-eight years after Robert  Brown’s discovery, Albert proved that water molecules randomly hitting the pollen grains caused this jittery motion. His paper convinced doubting scientists that molecules and atoms exist, are active, and can be mathematically quantified.49</b>

<b>His third 1905 paper on Special Theory of Relativity, more important, was less understood.  Albert built on the Copernican-Kepler-Galileo finding that everything moves: our earth turns on its axis, revolves around our sun, which revolves with other suns in our Milky Way galaxy, which revolves among a spiral of other galaxies, etc.</b>

<b>Albert built his Special Theory of Relativity on two certainties: 1-the laws of physics are the same everywhere; 2-nothing travels faster than light at 186,000 miles per second.</b>

<b>Albert’s insight was that a movement takes place, an event occurs, each in its own frame of reference, relative to, in relation to, an observer’s place and rate of movement, which is the observer’s frame of reference.  In short: movements, events are relative to an observer.</b>

<b>On Albert’s daily streetcar ride home from work, looking back, he saw Bern’s famous Clock Tower receding.  He thought: if his streetcar heading away from the Clock Tower approached the speed of light, its clock hands would seem to slow down while his own pocket watch ticked normally.</b>

<b>On earth, Albert knew, where the fastest moving thing is a tiny fraction the speed of light’s 186,000 miles per second, Newton’s laws hold firm. Time and space, as Newton believed, do seem separate and fixed. But on a fast moving spaceship, approaching the speed of light, a clock aboard the spaceship (time) slows down.</b>

<b>The faster the spaceship, the more its clock slows down, called Time Dilation. Time Dilation has been proved. In 1971 two identically set atomic clocks, one stationary on the ground, the other jet-flown around the world, when compared, showed that the jet flown clock had slowed down.</b>

<b>To humans inside a speeding spaceship all seems normal. But as it passes a stationary observer, because of the observer’s frame of reference, the observer sees the oncoming spaceship shorter in front and longer in back.</b>

<b>Albert’s findings–startling, revolutionary, strange even to him–took time to be absorbed, argued about, understood, tested, and ultimately accepted by scientists.</b>

<b>Albert’s genius was to think differently, outside common thought, “outside the box.” His younger questioning rebellious skepticism led to these 1905 intuitive grand discoveries.</b>

<b>Albert worked out mathematical proof that Time and Space are not fixed, not separate, but are interwoven as spacetime. To our 3 dimensions of length, width, and height he added a fourth dimension–spacetime.50   The only fixed factor is the speed of light.</b>

<b>Albert’s fourth 1905 paper, a footnote to his third Special Theory of Relativity paper, held that matter and energy are similar and can be converted one into the other. Marie Curie (1867-1934), for example, found in 1902 that uranium from pitch-blend (matter), gave off electronic radiation energy.  Albert independently conceived of this matter-to-energy conversion in his famous formula: E=mc2.</b>

<b>E for Energy equals mass (which is, matter), multiplied by c (c for celeritus, Latin for speed of light), squared.  186,000 miles per second, squared, is so huge a number that if atoms on a pinhead could be split apart, their energy would explode like an atom bomb.51</b>

<b>Biographer Walter Isaacson wrote: “Einstein’s 1905 burst of creativity was astonishing. He had devised a revolutionary quantum theory of light, helped prove the existence of atoms, explained Brownian motion, upended the concept of space and time, and produced what would become science’s best known equation.”52</b>

<b>Albert’s Special Theory of Relativity covered only bodies moving parallel in straight lines at constant speeds.</b>

<b>It would take him 10 more years to find a General Theory of Relativity, backed by math, that explained how and why bodies in space move at varying speeds in curved motion around other bodies.53</b>

<b>Albert, waiting to be recognized, still needing Patent Office income, wrote other scholarly papers and also completed his Ph.D. dissertation for the University of Zurich, summer 1905.54</b>

<b>His application to be a University of Bern lecturer required submitting another original physics paper. This he did allowing him to lecture, unpaid except for student fees, 1908-1909, early mornings, before Patent Office hours, thus to only a few students. 55</b>

<b>The first scholar to inquire about Relativity was the world renowned University of Berlin physicist Max Planck (1858-1947,) who soon added Relativity to his own lectures.56</b>

<b>Planck’s assistant, Max von Laue (1879-1960), sent to Bern to consult Albert, was surprised to find him working as a lowly Patent Office clerk.</b>

<b>Noticed, at last, Albert received job offers. He resigned from the Patent Office July 6, 1909, where his best thinking had been done for 7 years. He became associate professor of physics, University of Zurich, 1909-10. He moved with Mileva, and 5-year old Hans Einstein to Zurich, Oct. 15, 1909, where their second son Eduard was born, July 28, 1910.57</b>

<b>He was full professor at German Speaking Karl-Ferdinand University, Prague, 1911-12.  While in Prague he attended a science conference in Brussels, Belgium, October 1911. At 32, the youngest physicist present, he met for the first time the greatest living physicists of the time, including Marie Curie.58</b>

<b>Albert next was physics professor at Zurich Polytechnic, 1912-1914, his alma mater, then granting Ph.D’s.  Here, luckily,  his friend Marcel Grossmann, head of the Polytechnic’s math department, taught Albert tensor calculus for curved space he needed to prove his 1915 General Theory of Relativity.</b>

<b>Albert’s last European position was at the prestigious University of Berlin, 1914-1933, 19 years, through World War I, Germany’s defeat and economic collapse, and Hitler’s rise to power, which forced Albert’s move to the U.S. in 1933.59</b>

<b>Raising two boys, the younger one, Eduard, a schizophrenic, Mileva’s science interest had waned. She resented Albert’s several extra-marital affairs, was bitter that he took the prestigious Berlin position partly to be near his divorced cousin Elsa Einstein (1876-1936), with whom he had an affair.</b>

<b>Marital friction deepened. Albert wrote out conditions under which he would live with Mileva: “You make sure . . . that I receive my three meals regularly in my room. You are neither to expect intimacy nor to reproach me in any way.”60  They separated. Mileva and the two boys left Berlin July 1914 for Zurich a month before WW I began (Aug. 1, 1914).</b>

<b>To get Mileva to agree to a divorce, Albert promised her and the boys the money from the Nobel Prize in Physics he expected, having been nominated annually since 1910.  The long divorce proceedings ended on Feb. 14, l919.  Albert admitted adultery.</b>

<b>Elsa, Albert’s cousin, divorced,61 lived with her two daughters Lisa and Margot in Berlin, where Albert visited her in 1912, before taking the Berlin job.</b>

<b>Separation and divorce from Mileva, overwork, carelessness about his health, caused Albert to become seriously ill during 1917-19.   Elsa restored his health. They married June 2, 1919. Elsa gave him regularity, protection, and freedom to think and write.</b>

<b>Albert’s first insight into his 1915 General Theory of Relativity came in a thought experiment in 1907 while still at the Patent Office.  His thought was: if a workman fell from a roof, until he hit the ground, he and everything on him would be weightless in free fall. So too would be people in a falling elevator atop a tall building whose holding cable had snapped.</b>

<b>His surprising insight was that moving heavenly bodies, like people and objects in free fall, carry spacetime with them.</b>

<b>His insights, greatly simplified, were: 1-The larger a moving heavenly body is, the more curved spacetime it carries around with it. 2-Newton’s gravity is really curved spacetime. 3-When starlight reaches a large mass like the sun that starlight will be slightly bent by the curved spacetime around the sun’s enormous mass. 4-If he figured the precise arc of light bent around an eclipsed sun, then a photograph of that eclipse would prove the correctness of his General Theory of Relativity.</b>

<b>Helped by tensor calculus taught him by his math friend Marcel Grossmann, Albert published his General Relativity paper, March 20, 1915, revised in 1916.62</b>

<b>In 1917 with WW I raging, Britain’s Royal Astronomer Frank Watson Dyson (1868-1939) planned for Cambridge University astronomer Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882-1944) to head a British team to photograph the sun’s eclipse predicted two years later, on May 29, 1919.63</b>

<b>Two photo team were sent to photograph the eclipse:  one went to Principe, a Portuguese island off West Africa; another photo team went to Sobral, northern Brazil, the two best viewing sites. These photos confirmed Einstein’s predicted arc of light deflection.  Einstein’s General Relativity Theory was thus proved true.</b>

<b>England’s greatest scientists flocked to the Great Room, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London, Nov. 6, 1919.   Dyson reported.  Eddington reported.  Others commented.  Royal Society Pres. J. J. Thomson, concluding, proclaimed:  …”[this] is…one of the highest achievements of human thought.”64</b>

<b>London Times, Nov. 7, 1919, headline: “Revolution in Science. New Theory of the Universe. Newton’s Ideas Overthrown.” Similar headlines, with Einstein’s photo, emblazoned newspapers worldwide and helped make Einstein an instant hero.65</b>

<b>Did this hero worship come from public relief that long, bloody, devastating WW I was over? that God, morality, good will, peace on earth—which many thought had died in the trenches–were restored?</b>

<b>With peace came news that Einstein, an anti-war German-born Swiss citizen, had discovered something new about the universe. His discovery was confirmed by photos taken by an English Quaker pacifist scientist.  WW I hatred was replaced by peaceful international scientific cooperation–temporarily.</b>

<b>Albert, amazed at the adulation, called the newspaper accounts “amusing feats of imagination.” The war-weary public, wanting someone to idolize and lionize, embraced this stunned, sad-eyed, long-haired, absent-minded professor. What Relativity meant did not matter.  His opinion was asked about everything under the sun. His disarming, witty replies, widely reported, brought smiles.  Elsa Einstein loved the attention.</b>

<b>The Nobel Prize in Physics committee, embarrassed for by-passing Einstein since 1910, awarded Albert its 1921 prize, not for controversial Relativity, but for his practical 1905 photo-electric effect paper. The prize money, $32,000, went as promised to his  ex-wife Mileva Maric and their sons.66</b>

<b>Albert never understood the public adulation but he used it as a platform for his pacifist views. He publicly criticized fellow scientists who worked for Germany’s war effort in making poison gas and flame throwers.</b>

<b>He stated publicly that if even 2% of military draftees refused to serve, all war machines would grind to a halt.  Anti-Semitism, his own pacifism, and his public opposition to the early Nazis made him a marked man.</b>

<b>His books were burned as “Jewish science.” A price was put on his head dead or alive.  His Berlin bank funds were blocked. His country home at Carputh near Berlin was ransacked. He fled to the U.S., worked at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J., 22 years, from 1933 to his death.</b>

<b>Hitler’s atrocities modified Einstein’s pacifism.  Other refugee European physicists told Einstein that Nazi scientists were close to splitting the uranium atom to make a devastating bomb.   His Aug. 2, 1939, letter warning Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt of the catastrophic danger, along with pressure from British intelligence, led to the Manhattan Project and the atomic bomb.67</b>

<b>Learning of the atom bombs dropped on Japan to end WWII, Einstein regretted having been involved.  Still seeking a unified theory to explain everything, still searching to know the mind of God, still scribbling formulas on paper, he died of a burst stomach aneurysm in Princeton Hospital, N.J., April 18, 1955, age 76.68</b>

<b>Why Einstein? What spurred his early efforts to 1905 to explain the mysteries of the universe, nearly alone, without academic connections, or collegues’ help, or library access?</b>

<b>Curiosity was his spur: stick-to-itiveness, self-confidence, an insatiable drive to discover how God works through nature.  Life’s hurts faded in comparison: teachers who said he would never amount to much; Zurich Polytechnic professors who put him down; prejudice which kept him jobless, illegitimate child, failed marriage, his own shortcomings as husband and father.</b>

<b>Galileo taught him that all planets and objects move, every event occurs, relative to an observer’s frame of reference.</b>

<b>Isaac Newton’s law of gravity taught him that stars and planets, according to size/mass, exert a gravitational “pull” on each other.</b>

<b>Michael Faraday’s (1791-1867) electromagnetism, on which his father and uncle’s electric business was based, led Albert to Scottish James Clerk Maxwell.</b>

<b>Maxwell’s mathematical proof that light at 186,000 miles per second is the visible form of Faraday’s electromagnetism, sparked his probing thought experiments.</b>

<b>A workman falling off a roof, a falling elevator full of people, all weightless in free fall, like heavenly planets, carry spacetime with them.  Spacetime is Newton’s gravity. Spacetime bends light around a large mass.</b>

<b>Einstein’s E=mc2 founded modern cosmology.  It encouraged scientists to search for the origin of the universe, the beginning of spacetime in the Big Bang 13.7 billion year ago, filling our expanding universe, bursting constantly from our sun and other suns in other  galaxies.</b>

<b>Einstein’s E=mc2 gave us nuclear energy for industry and electricity. Nuclear power lights 80% of France, including its Eiffel Tower.</b>

<b>Einstein’s genius, Walter Isaacson concluded, was his imagination guided by faith in nature’s unity.</b>

<b>Young Einstein rebelled against the status quo to give us a new view of the universe.  Old Einstein resisted Quantum Physics, which he helped found, because its followers denied certainty in nature, believed probabilities are all we can rely on.  Einstein said, Nature’s God, ” does not play dice.”</b>

<b>How did he do it—usher in our modern age; this rare, bright, nonconformist rebel?  He was the right person at the right place at the right time.  Will we ever see his like again?</b>

<b>We enjoyed doing this review.  Thank you for being here.
</b>

<b>References Below Include: 1-Books Read by Authors, 2-Footnotes (with added material omitted above due to time limitation) , 3-Best Albert Einstein Internet Sources, 4-About the Authors:</b>

<b>Books Examine by Authors</b>

<b>1. Aczel, Amir D. S. <i>God’s Equation: Einstein, Relativity, and the Expanding Universe</i>. NY: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1999.</b>

<b>2. Bodanis, David. <i>E=mc2: A Biography of the World’s Most Famous Equation</i>. NY: Walker &amp; Co., 2000.</b>

<b>3. Caliprice, Alice, Editor. <i>Dear Professor Einstein</i>. Foreword by Evelyn Einstein.  Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2002. Children’s letters to and from Einstein.</b>

<b>4. Clark, Ronald W. <i>Einstein: The Life and Times</i>. NY: World Publishing Co., 1956.</b>

<b>5. Cwiklik, Robert. <i>Albert Einstein and the Theory of Relativity</i>. Hauppauge, NY: Barron’s Educational Series. Profiles in science for young people, ages 12-13.</b>

<b>6. Hoffman, Banesh, with Collaboration of Helen Dukas. <i>Albert Einstein, Creator and Rebel</i>. NY: Viking Press, 1972.</b>

<b>7. Ireland, Karin. <i>Albert Einstein</i>. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Silver Burdett Press, 1989.</b>

<b>8. Isaacson, Walter. <i>Einstein, His Life and Universe</i>. NY: Simon &amp; Schuster, 2007.</b>

<b>9. Lakin, Patricia. <i>Albert Einstein, Genius of the Twentieth Century</i>. NY: Aladdin, 2005.</b>

<b>10. Overbye, Dennis. <i>Einstein in Love: A Scientific Romance.</i> NY: Penguin Books, 2000.</b>

<b>11. Parker, Barry. <i>Einstein’s Brainchild, Relativity Made Easy</i>. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2000.</b>

<b>12. Schwartz, Joseph and Michael McGinness. <i>E=MC2: Einstein for Beginners</i>. NY: Pantheon Books, 1979.</b>

<b>13. White, Michael and John Gribbin. Einstein, <i>A Life in Science</i></b><b>. NY: Penguin, 1993.</b>

<b>14. Zackheim, Michele. <i>Einstein’s Daughter, The Search for Lieserl</i>. NY: Penguin Putnam, 1999.</b>

<b>Footnotes</b>

<b>1. Authors Franklin and Betty J. Parker wanted to review this Einstein biography because Einstein’s theories were central in Stephen Hawking, <i>A Briefer History of Time</i>, 2005, which we reviewed, April 18, 2007. In that review we realized that although Einstein is an acknowledged science genius, few know of his troubled life, even fewer know how he changed our view of the universe. Our aim is to clarify his life and his enormous contributions. Our Hawking review can be accessed at:</b>

<b>http://www.toadfire.com/blog_full.jsp?blogID=3469
or:    http://bfparker.blog.co.uk/2007/01/15/universe_big_bang_black_holes_dialogue_o~1556047  or:http://bfparker.blog.co.uk/2007/01/15/universe_big_bang_black_holes_dialogue_o%7E1556047</b>

<b>Isaacson’s Acknowledgement credits experts who checked his book’s accuracy, including several editors of Einstein’s papers and some 10 prominent physicists and science historians. See Isaacson, pp. xv-xviii,</b>

<b>2. Interviewed on Dec. 7, 1999, Isaacson told why the then editors, previous editors, and consulting historians chose Albert Einstein as Person of the 20th Century. For Isaacson’s discussion of Einstein’s importance and Einstein’s views on God, see:
http://www.time.com/time/community/transcripts/1999/122799isaacson.html</b>

<b>3. For description of Aspen Institute, Washington, D.C., leadership discussion group with world-wide connections, see:
http://www.aspeninstitute.org/site/c.huLWjeMRKpH/b.4939471</b>

<b>4. For book reviews of Jürgen Neffe, <i>Einstein: A Biography</i>. NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007 (with some comparisons to Walter Isaacson’s 2007 Einstein biography), see:
http://www.google.com/search?q=J%C3%BCrgen+Neffe%2C+Einstein%2C+reviews&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
&lt;http://www.google.com/search?q=J%C3%BCrgen+Neffe%2C+Einstein%2C+reviews&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>5. For 2008 Albert Einstein film projects, see: http://search.curryguide.com/execute/search/nph-web.cgi?query=Albert+Einstein%2C+film+rights&amp;x=20&amp;y=7&amp;ac=pandia&amp;adbg=ffffff&amp;intprom=s&amp;where=</b>

<b>6. For Albert Einstein’s parents, see Isaacson, Chap. Two,
and:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Albert+Einstein’s+parents&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Albert+Einstein%27s+parents&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>7. For Thomas Edison’s (1847-1931) Pearl Street generator station, lower Manhattan, New York City, which first electrified a square mile of NYC buildings on Sept. 4, 1882,
see:
http://search.curryguide.com/execute/search/nph-web.cgi?query=Edison%2C+Pearl+Street%2C+Manhattan%2C+NYC&amp;x=16&amp;y=7&amp;ac=pandia&amp;adbg=ffffff&amp;intprom=s&amp;where=
and:
http://search.curryguide.com/execute/search/nph-web.cgi?query=Edison%2C+Pearl+Street%2C+Manhattan%2C+NYC&amp;x=16&amp;y=7&amp;ac=pandia&amp;adbg=ffffff&amp;intprom=s&amp;where=
and:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Thomas+Edison%2C+Pearl+Street%2C+Manhattan%2C+NYC&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and
http://www.google.com/search?q=Thomas+Edison%2C+Pearl+Street%2C+Manhattan%2C+NYC&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>8. For “Einstein, deformed as baby” and as a late talker,
see:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+believed+deform+as+baby&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US23
and
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+believed+deform+as+baby&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>One account has little Albert saying for the first time at a meal, “The soup is too hot.” His relieved parents asked, “Why haven’t you spoken like this before?” His alleged reply was, “So far everything has been in order.”</b>

<b>9. Marie (called Maja) Einstein (1881-1951) and Albert were close all their lives. She later earned a doctorate in Romance Languages, University of Bern, Switzerland, 1909; married Paul Winteler, 1910; moved with him near Florence, Italy; fled to the U.S. in 1939 to escape persecution of Jews in Italy (husband Paul Winteler could not enter the U.S. for health reasons); and lived with her brother Albert Einstein on 112 Mercer Street, Princeton, NJ, until her death at age 70, June 25, 1951. For her writing on her brother Albert’s boyhood,
see:
http://books.google.com/books?id=dYpwdLWNR2cC&amp;pg=PR15&amp;lpg=PR15&amp;dq=Maja+Winteler-Einstein,+Albert+Einstein&amp;source=web&amp;ots=BWjdGz7UTt&amp;sig=boQnK9ICSMx2xYBzwogQUijXYbU
and:
http://books.google.com/books?id=dYpwdLWNR2cC&amp;pg=PR15&amp;lpg=PR15&amp;dq=Maja+Winteler-Einstein,+Albert+Einstein&amp;source=web&amp;ots=BWjdGz7UTt&amp;sig=boQnK9ICSMx2xYBzwogQUijXYbU</b>

<b>For more on sister Maja and Albert’s younger years, see:
http://www.einstein-website.de/biographies/einsteinmaja_content.html
and many entries under “Maja Winteler-Einstein—Einstein, Albert” at:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Maja+Winteler-Einstein%2C+Albert+Einstein&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>10. For Einstein age 4, ill, “Einstein, compass”…hidden behind things,” see:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+compass&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>11. For “Einstein as a boy disliking a Prussian-style military parade,” see: Isaacson, p. 21, and:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+boy%2C+military+parade&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>12. For “…he’ll never make a success,” see Clark, p. 10. For “primary teachers as sergeants” see Isaacson, p. 21. On the later scientific value of his slowness as a boy, Einstein wrote: …”that his slow development and backwardness aided him in developing his theories. The normal adult never thinks about space and time. These are thoughts that he has thought about when he was a child. But since my intellectual development was retarded, as a result of which I began to wonder about space and time only when I had already grown up. Naturally, I could go deeper into the problem than a child with normal abilities.”
Sources:
http://www.jewishmag.com/59mag/einstein/einstein.htm
and:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+school%2C+He+will+never+amount+to+much.&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234&amp;aq=t</b>

<b>13. Isaacson, pp. 17-18.</b>

<b>14. On Talmey: It was an old Jewish custom to invite a poor student to family meals, as depicted in Sholem Aleichim’s (1859-1916) Fiddler on the Roof (film) when milkman Teyve invites the traveling university student to a Friday evening meal. See: Isaacson, pp. 18, 19-20, 23, 82, 294-295; and
http://www.chem.harvard.edu/herschbach/Einstein_Student.pdf</b>

<b>15. Aaron Bernstein (1812-84), People’s Books on Natural Science. Born Max Talmud (Talmud means instruction or the authoritative body of Jewish tradition), his name was changed to Max Talmey when he immigrated to the U.S.</b>

<b>16. Max Talmey, Relativity Theory Simplified and the Formative Period of its Inventor, With an Introduction by George B. Pegram, 1932. Talmud gave Albert a book titled Force and Matter, never imagining that years later Einstein would publish theories of relativity, show that matter could be turned into energy, give the world the famous formula, E =mc2, connect spacetime as one entity, and show that Newton’s gravity was really curved spacetime.</b>

<b>17. For many entries on “Einstein, Talmey,”
see:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Talmey&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>18. Albert left Munich for Pavia, Italy, Dec. 29, 1894.</b>

<b>19. Called Zurich Polytechnic College in this paper for clarity it was founded in 1854, opened in 1855 as Swiss Federation of Technology, known familiarly as ETH, its German abbreviation. It has always been highly ranked academically with 21 Nobel Laureates associated with it as students or faculty. Albert’s first born son Hans Albert Einstein (1904-73) also attended ETH and received his Ph.D. in technical sciences there in 1936. See: Fox &amp; Keck, pp. 49-52;
and:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETH_Zurich</b>

<b>20. Gustav Maier was the family friend who got Einstein the age waiver to take his first Zurich Polytechnic entrance exam. Maier’s banking firm in Ulm, Germany, had been located on the same street as Einstein’s grandfather’s featherbed factory.
See:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E02E2DB123BF937A25751COA962948260&amp;sec=health&amp;spon=&amp;pagewanted=print
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E02E2DB123BF937A25751COA962948260&amp;sec=health&amp;spon=&amp;pagewanted=print</b>

<b>21. Einstein’s first (failed) entrance exam dates were Oct. 8-14, 1895.</b>

<b>22. Pestalozzi’s world wide influence included John Dewey’s (1859-1952) U.S. child-centered progressive school movement.</b>

<b>23. Einstein added to this thought question (at age 16): …”Of course, such a thing is impossible.” Isaacson, p. 26.</b>

<b>24. Jost Winteler (1846-1929) was school principal and history and Greek professor. Another Winteler daughter Anna later married Albert’s close friend Micheleangelo Besso. The Winteler son, Paul, later married Albert’s sister Maja, forming a life-long Einstein-Winteler connection.</b>

<b>25. For many entries on “Einstein, Winteler,”
see:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Winteler&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234 &lt;http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Winteler&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234&gt;</b>

<b>26. Einstein’s essay on his future plans was written in faulty French. See: Isaacson, p. 31.</b>

<b>27. For entries on Prof. Heinrich Weber, see
(1): http://www-history.mcs.standrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Weber_Heinrich.html</b>

<b>(2): http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Heinrich+Weber&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
&lt;http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Heinrich+Weber&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234&gt;</b>

<b>28. For “Einstein, Marie Winteler,” her despondency, breakdown, and recovery after Einstein broke off their romance, and on her later marriage and life,
see:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Marie+Winteler&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Marie+Winteler&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>29. Albert called Mileva “Dollie”; she called him “Johnnie.” See Isaacson index for many entries under Maric, Mileva. For other entries under “Einstein, Mileva Maric:”
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Mileva+Maric&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Mileva+Maric&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>For New York Times articles on Mileva Maric:
http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?frow=0&amp;n=10&amp;srcht=s&amp;query=Mileva+Maric&amp;srchst=nyt&amp;submit.x=34&amp;submit.y=13&amp;submit=sub&amp;hdlquery=&amp;bylquery=&amp;daterange=full&amp;mon1=01&amp;day1=01&amp;year1=1981&amp;mon2=02&amp;day2=11&amp;year2=2008
and: http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?frow=0&amp;n=10&amp;srcht=s&amp;query=Mileva+Maric&amp;srchst=nyt&amp;submit.x=34&amp;submit.y=13&amp;submit=sub&amp;hdlquery=&amp;bylquery=&amp;daterange=full&amp;mon1=01&amp;day1=01&amp;year1=1981&amp;mon2=02&amp;da</b>

<b>(3) Also from New York Times on Mileva Maric:
http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?query=Mileva+Maric&amp;srchst=g&amp;submit.x=12&amp;submit.y=9
and: http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?query=Mileva+Maric&amp;srchst=g&amp;submit.x=12&amp;submit.y=9</b>

<b>30. Isaacson, p. 42.</b>

<b>31. Ibid., p. 34.</b>

<b>32. Ibid., p. 35. Einstein ignored Prof. Jean Pernet’s lab instructions, caused a lab explosion, which injured Einstein’s right hand.</b>

<b>33. Ibid., p. 35. Math Prof. Minkowski later remarked that Einstein was: Q “…a lazy dog [who] never bothers about mathematics at all.” Ironically in 1907, 7 years after Albert graduated from Zurich Polytechnic, Prof. Minkowski developed the mathematical framework that made Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity more acceptable to scientists. Prof Minkowski said sometime after 1905: “For me [Einstein's work] came as a tremendous surprise… for in his student days Einstein had been a lazy sluggard [Faulpelz]. He never bothered about mathematics at all.”
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Minkowki</b>

<b>34. Micheleangelo Besso (1873-1955), a mechanical engineer, 6 years older than Einstein, was Einstein’s lifelong friend, a sounding board for Einstein’s ideas, and acted as an elder brother in Einstein’s troubled marriage to and divorce from Mileva Maric. Besso and his wife Anna née Winteler Besso also helped care for the Einstein’s two sons.</b>

<b>Einstein and Besso both played the violin and had similar science interests. They met while Einstein boarded with Aarau Cantonal high school’s principal Jost Winteler whose older daughter Anna Lee married Besso in 1898. The Bessos moved to Milan, Italy, where he was an electrical society’s consultant until Einstein, then working at the Bern Swiss Patent Office, knowing of a vacancy, urged Besso to successfully apply.</b>

<b>Reflecting on Besso’s death shortly before Einstein’s own death (April 18, 1955), he wrote to Besso’s son and wife, marveling that Besso had lived so long and happily in harmony with his wife, “an undertaking in which I twice failed rather miserably.” Isaacson, p. 540.</b>

<b>35. Marcel Grossmann, whose father owned a factory near Zurich, later helped Einstein in two turning points of his life; first, by persuading his father to speak to the Swiss Patent Office director about Einstein’s abilities and need for a job. This led to Einstein’s Patent Office job during1902-09. Secondly, then math Prof. Marcel Grossman taught Einstein during 1911-12 (both then taught at Zurich Polytechnic) the special math for curved space Einstein needed for his 1915 General Theory of Relativity. For many entries on “Einstein, Marcel Grossmann,
see:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Marcel+Grossmann&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Marcel+Grossmann&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>36. Albert Einstein’s final exam score at Zurich Polytechnic was 4.9 out of 6, allowing him to graduate with a Diploma on July 28, 1900. Mileva’s Maric’s failing score was 4 out of 6. Source: White &amp; Gribble pp. 40, 49.</b>

<b>37. Isaacson, p. 61 and:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/einstein/bodanis.html</b>

<b>38. Shortened letter from full versions in: Overbye, p. 72, and
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/einstein/bodanis.html</b>

<b>39. Neither Marie Winteler nor Mileva Maric were Jewish.</b>

<b>40. For scholarly investigation of Albert Einstein-Mileva Mirac’s love child, see: Michele Zackheim. Einstein’s Daughter, The Search for Lieserl. NY: Penguin Putnam, 1999. See also Isaacson, p. 66.</b>

<b>41. Isaacson, Chap. 4, “The Lovers, ” especially p. 66.</b>

<b>42. Ibid. Mileva Maric’s close friend in Serbia was Helene Kaufler Savic. See: Zackheim’s book.</b>

<b>43. Isaacson, Chap 4. For a photo of Einstein and two “Olympia Academy” students, Conrad Habicht (1876-1958) and Maurice Solovine (1875-1958),
see:
http://www.einstein-website.de/z_biography-e.html</b>

<b>44. These self-named Olympia Academy avant garde rebels read and discussed classics, including philosophers Spinoza on God in nature and David Hume (1711-76) on skepticism. They discussed scientists Austrian physicist Ernst Mach (1838-1916), French mathematician Henri Poincaré (1854-1912), both of whose works influenced Albert’s relativity theories of 1905 and 1915. Isaacson, pp. 79-84, lists other authors and books read by Olympia Academy students.</b>

<b>45. Marcel Grossman first told Einstein of the possible Swiss Patent Office position at Bern in April 1901. Einstein applied for the post in Dec. 1901, was offered the post on June 16, 1902, and started work there on June 23, 1902. His job was confirmed as permanent on Sept. 1904. He was promoted to Technical Expert Second Class on April 1, 1906. He resigned July 6, 1909, to become University of Zurich physics professor. For many entries on “Einstein, Patent Office, Bern, Switzerland,”
see:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Patent+Office%2C+Bern%2C+Switzerland&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and: http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Patent+Office%2C+Bern%2C+Switzerland&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>46. For entries on “Einstein, Patent Office, Bern,”
see:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Patent+Office%2C+Bern&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and: http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Patent+Office%2C+Bern&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and:
http://www.einsteinyear.org/facts/timeline</b>

<b>47. Albert Einstein’s first son, Hans Albert Einstein, born May 14, 1904, who died in 1973, is mentioned in Footnote 19 above.</b>

<b>48. First 1905 photo electric effect paper: Albert Einstein, “On a Heuristic [i.e., Hypothetical] Point of View Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light,” Annalen der Physik, Vol. 17 (June 9, 1905), pp. 132-148. For details of all Einstein 1905 “Miracle Year” published writings,
see:
http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teaching/2509_Einstein_1905.html
http://www.pitt.edu/%7Ejdnorton/teaching/2509_Einstein_1905.html
and:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+1905%2C+Miracle+Year&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+1905%2C+Miracle+Year&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>49. Second 1905 “Brownian Movement” paper: Albert Einstein, “On the Movement of Small Particles Suspended in Stationary Liquids Required by the Molecular-Kinetic Theory of Heat,” Annalen der Physik, Vol. 17 (July 18, 1905), pp. 549-560.</b>

<b>50. Third 1905 Special Relativity paper: Albert Einstein, “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,” Annalen der Physik (Annals of Physics, Vol. 17 (Sept. 26, 1905), pp. 891-921.</b>

<b>When Einstein finished his Special Relativity paper he gave his 31 scribbled pages to wife Mileva Maric to check for math errors and fell exhausted into bed. The background and Einstein’s thought processes on this third Special Relativity paper are explained in Overbye, Chap. 10; in Isaacson, Chapters 5 and 6;
And:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/einstein/kaku.html</b>

<b>51. For many entries on “Einstein, E=MC2,”
see:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+E%3DMC2&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and: http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+E%3DMC2&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>52. Isaacson, p. 140.</b>

<b>53. Few before Einstein made such imaginative leaps. The mystery is how–mostly alone by reading, study, and thought experiment–during 10 hectic troubled years ages 16 to 26, Einstein took insights from earlier scientists’ findings and put them together in remarkable ways in his 1905 papers.</b>

<b>We may never know the sources of Einstein’s rare intelligence, genius, boldness to be, do, and think differently. His father had a markedly careful way of looking at things from every possible angle. His mother was independent and determined. His Jewish heritage may account for his reverence for an all-knowing God who works through nature’s wonders.  His early troubled life, the temper of his time, his minority status as a Jew among Christians may all have spurred his drive for thinking about and determination to account for nature’s wonders.</b>

<b>54. Einstein’s University of Zurich Ph.D. Dissertation (1905): “A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions,” 1905, Annalen der Physik, 19 (1906), pp. 289-305, is his least impressive but most cited Einstein publication because of its usefulness. It deals simply with how sugar particles are suspended in a fluid, but has been surprisingly applicable to the way sand particles get stirred up in cement mixers, the properties of cow’s milk, and the way fine particles of dust and droplets of liquid (aerosols) are suspended in clouds.
Source:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14019054.400-the-everyday-world-of-einstein-what-did-albert-want-with-acup-of-sweet-coffee-a-cement-mixer-and-a-dirty-cloud-.html
and:
http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teaching/2509_Einstein_1905.html
and:
http://www.pitt.edu/%7Ejdnorton/teaching/2509_Einstein_1905.html</b>

<b>55. The “few” students attending Einstein’s early morning University of Bern lectures included his friend Michele Besso and his sister Maja, then studying for the University of Zurich Ph.D. in Romance Languages. White &amp; Gribble, p. 75.</b>

<b>56. University of Berlin physicist Max Planck, 21 years older, was Einstein’s father figure. Planck’s assistant Max von Lau became Einstein’s helpful friend. Planck was the first leading physicist to accept and soon lecture on Einstein’s relativity theory. As Annalen der Physik editor Planck published Einstein’s 1905 papers (also earlier and later papers).</b>

<b>University of Berlin Profs. Planck and Walther Nernst (1864-1941), both went in person to persuade Einstein to work in Berlin (1914-33).  Unlike Newton and James C. Maxwell, who saw light as a wave, Planck was the first to consider light as rapidly moving discrete particles, an idea which Einstein incorporated in his 1905 photo-electric effect paper.  Planck met with Hitler to argue, unsuccessfully, that the Nazi campaign against the Jews hurt German science. Planck’s son was killed by the Gestapo in 1944 for being involved in an unsuccessful Hitler assassination plot. Source: Fox &amp; Keck, pp. 216-219.</b>

<b>57. Einstein’s sickly second son Eduard Einstein (1910-65) was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1930 and died at age 55 in a Zurich mental asylum. As caretaker, his mother Mileva Maric Einstein bore most of the emotional burden, often helped by the Bessos, while Einstein paid the financial cost.</b>

<b>58. Einstein first met at the First Solvay Science Conference, Brussels, Belgium, Oct. 1911, such world renown scientists as France’s Marie Curie, French mathematician Jules Henri Poincaré (1854-1912), Germany’s Max Planck, New Zealand born Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937), and Dutch physicist Henrik A. Lorentz (1853-1928).</b>

<b>Of Einstein’s relativity theory Planck wrote: “If Einstein’s theory should prove to be correct, as I expect it will, he will be considered the Copernicus of the twentieth century.” Source: Aczel, p. 27.</b>

<b>Asked to evaluate Einstein as possible Zurich Polytechnic physics professor, Marie Curie wrote: “I much admire the work which Einstein has published…and think…his work as being in the first rank.”</b>

<b>In this same connection J.H. Poincaré wrote of Albert: “The future will show more and more, the worth of Einstein, and the university which is able to capture this young master is certain of gaining much honour from the operation.” White &amp; Gribble, p. 109 and Isaacson, pp.168-171.</b>

<b>59. In Berlin during 1914-33 Einstein was also a member of the Prussian Academy of Science and directed research at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. For many entries on “Einstein, University of Berlin,”
see:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+University+of+Berlin&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+University+of+Berlin&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>60. For Einstein’s “living conditions” instructions to his first wife Mileva Maric and of his affairs with other women,
see: http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/einstein/life/family.php</b>

<b>61. Elsa Einstein married textile trader Max Lowenthal (1864-1914) in 1896 and divorced him in 1908. For Elsa Einstein biography, see: http://www.einstein-website.de/biographies/einsteinelsa.html</b>

<b>62. An abortive attempt was made to photo-test a summer 1914 eclipse for Einstein best seen in the Crimea, Russia by Berlin’s Royal Prussian Observatory assistant Erwin Freundlich (1885-1964). Freundlich got to the Crimea with photo equipment just as World War I erupted, was captured as a spy, and was luckily released in an exchange of prisoners. This failed attempt strangely helped Albert for he had made a mistake in math so that his degrees of arc of bent-light was slightly off. Had this abortive photo expedition been successful his General Relativity Theory might have been discredited. See: Isaacson, index under Freundlich, Erwin Finlay.</b>

<b>63. Because of WW I communications disruption Einstein sent his 1915 General Relativity paper to University of Leyden (Netherlands) astronomy Prof. Willem de Sitter (1872-1935), who forwarded it via Finland to England’s Cambridge University astronomer Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882-1944). Eddington, soon a convinced relativity believer, helped prove Einstein’s General Relativity theory true in a 1919 eclipse, resulting in Einstein’s near-instant world fame. Source: Clark, pp. 208-09f. For “Einstein, Eddington” entries,
see:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Eddington&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Eddington&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>64. For entries on the startling results of “Einstein, 1919 eclipse,”
see: Bodanis interview in:
http://www.panmacmillan.com/interviews/displayPage.asp?PageID=3365
and:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+1919+eclipse&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+1919+eclipse&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>65. Ibid., for headline news coverage of “Einstein, 1919 eclipse.”</b>

<b>66. Nominated annually since 1910 for the Nobel Prize for Physics, Einstein’s selection was bypassed because the selection committee thought his relativity theories might be wrong and by anti-Jewish prejudice, led by former (1905) Nobel Physics Prize winner Philipp A. Lenard (1862-1947), a virulent anti-Semite and later dedicated Nazi.</b>

<b>Einstein’s Nobel Prize selection was also delayed after 1919 photo eclipse proof of his relativity theory because it contradicted over 200 years of Newtonian physics. No physics prize was given in 1921, allowing the committee to compromise, giving the 1922 prize to Danish physicist Niels H.D. Bohr (1885-1962) and the 1921 prize to Einstein, not for his still controversial relativity theories, but for his practical 1905 photoelectric effect theory.</b>

<b>knowing that Einstein planned a lecture tour in Japan, University of Berlin friend Max von Laue alerted Einstein about a special honor in December 1922 but Einstein, annoyed at the long delay and showing indifference, went on to Japan.</b>

<b>Diplomats had to sort out the protocol problem: German ambassador to Sweden Rudolf Nadolny accepted the Nobel Prize for Einstein, the Swedish ambassador to Germany handed Einstein the Nobel medal on his return to Japan, and Einstein, ignoring the fact that he had been awarded the prize for his photo electric effect theory, instead gave his Nobel speech, July 1923 on relativity. Sources: White &amp; Gribbin, pp. 100, 125, 165-166, 179-180. Fox &amp;Keck, pp. 190-195.</b>

<b>For entries on “Einstein, Nobel Prize for Physics for 1921″   and for “Einstein, Rudolf Nadolny,”
see:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Rudolf+Nadolny&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234&amp;q=Einstein%2C+Noble+Prize+in+Physics+for+1921&amp;btnG=Search
and:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234&amp;q=Einstein%2C+Noble+Prize+in+Physics+for+1921&amp;btnG=Search</b>

<b>67. For entries on “Einstein, Atom Bomb,
see:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+atom+bomb&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and: http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+atom+bomb&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>68. For key Einstein events in the U.S., 1933-55, 22 years:</b>

<b>(1) Einstein’s first U.S. visit, April 2-May 30, 1921, with Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann (1874-1952, Russian-born, British subject) to raise funds for what is now Hebrew University of Jerusalem (which still benefits from owning his papers and has commercial copyright use of his name). Einstein was given a hero’s welcome in NYC and lectured in Washington, D.C. and Cleveland, Ohio.</b>

<b>(2) He returned to the U.S. briefly in 1931 to lecture at California Institute of Technology (Caltech), visited Hollywood, CA, where he was cheered as a rock star when he appeared with Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977) at the opening of Chaplin’s City Lights film. When Einstein asked what the cheering meant, Chaplin replied: they cheer me because they all understand me; they cheer you because no one understands you. For entries for “Einstein, Millikan, Caltech,
see:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Millikan%2C+Caltech&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>(3) Why Einstein worked at the Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, 1933 to his death in 1955, 22 years:  About 1929 wealthy Newark, NJ, department store owner Louis Bamberger (1855-1944) and his sister Caroline née Bamberger Fuld asked educator and philanthropic foundation executive Abraham Flexner’s (1866-1959) advice on the best use of a $5 million philanthropic gift.</b>

<b>Flexner urged them to create an Institute for Advanced Study where eminent scholars free from lecturing and other duties could explore new knowledge. The idea was modeled on Kaiser Wilhelm II Institutes some 20 years earlier (Einstein headed the one in Berlin during 1917-33). Practical results from these research institutes helped make Germany a world leader in industries related to chemistry and science.</b>

<b>Flexner, who would later site his Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, NJ (near but independent of Princeton University), was in Pasadena, CA, early 1932, to confer with California Institute of California (Caltech) chief scientist Robert Millikan (1868-1953) about recruiting European and U.S. scientists. Millikan told Flexner to speak to Einstein then at Caltech.</b>

<b>Einstein, then on his second annual short term Caltech lecturing visit (during 1931, 1932, 1933), became interested in Flexner’s Institute for Advanced Study. They talked again in Oxford, England, late spring, 1932; and again two months later at Einstein’s summer home in Carputh near Berlin. Einstein agreed to join the Institute for Advanced Study initially for 6 months.</b>

<b>In December 1932, to escape Hitler’s holocaust (Hitler became Chancellor of Germany Jan. 30 1933), Einstein fled Germany to work at the Institute for Advance Study, Princeton, NJ. He lived nearby at 112 Mercer Street, became a U.S. citizen (while retaining Swiss citizenship) on Oct. 30, 1940, and died in 1955.</b>

<b>For entries on “Einstein, Flexner,”see:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Flexner&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Flexner&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>For Franklin &amp; Betty Parker, “Abraham and Simon Flexner, Medical Education Reformers,” access any one of the following 3 blogs:
http://bfparker.sulekha.com/blog/post/2007/06/abraham-and-simon-flexner-medical-education-reformers.htm
(or): http://bfparker.mindsay.com/abraham_and_simon_flexner_medical_education_reformersby_franklinbetty_parker.mws
(or):  http://bfparker.shoutpost.com/archives/2007/June</b>

<b>(4) Einstein’s Aug. 2, 1939 letter to Pres. F.D. Roosevelt warning of Nazi’s atom bomb progress: Einstein in Princeton, N.J., first heard in late 1938 from Danish physicist Niels Bohr (1885-1962) that German scientists were nearing success in splitting the uranium atom and making a bomb of unimaginable destruction.</b>

<b>This information was confirmed to Einstein in mid July 1939 while on vacation in long Island, NY, by visiting Jewish physicist Leo Szilard (1898-1964), who had also fled Nazi Germany to the U.S. Szilard and another physicist drafted and prevailed on Einstein to sign a letter to Pres. Roosevelt, Aug. 2, 1939, warning him of the danger</b>

<b>The letter and attending reports on it languished in U.S. bureaucratic files until Pearl Harbor when British intelligence, which knew of the danger, pressured the U.S. military to create the secret Manhattan Project leading to the U.S. atom bombs dropped on Japan that ended WW II.</b>

<b>See footnote 67 for entries on “Einstein, Atom Bomb.” See indexes under “Roosevelt, Franklin” in Overbye, Fox &amp; Keck (especially pp. 9-14), White &amp; Gribbon, Clark, Hoffmann, Isaacson. For entries on “Einstein, Roosevelt,”
see:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Roosevelt&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Roosevelt&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>Best Albert Einstein Internet Sources</b>

<b>1. “Albert Einstein, 1879-1955.” Library of Congress, many entries on 10 pp.:
http://search.loc.gov:8765/query.html?col=loc&amp;qt=Alfred+Einstein&amp;qp=url%3A%2Frr%2F+url%3A%2Fcfbook%2Furl%3A%2Fpoetry%2F+url%3A%2Ffolklife%2F&amp;submit.x=13&amp;submit.y=13</b>

<b>2. Albert Einstein, 1879-1955.” 39 clips of film stock footage libraries:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Albert+Einstein%2C+stock+film+footage&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>3. World Year of Physics 2005: Einstein in the 21st Century:
Physics groups world-wide designated 2005 the “World Year of Physics, honoring the centennial of Einstein’s 1905 “Year of Miracles” and the 50th year since his death in 1955. Over 400 world wide celebratory events were held including conferences, museum exhibits, webcasts, plays, poetry reading, and other events.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/12/opinion/12horgan.html
and
http://physics2005.org/international.html</b>

<b>4. Albert Einstein Quotes/Articles on God, Religion, Ethics and Science
http://atheism.about.com/od/einsteingodreligion/tp/EinsteinGodReligionScience.htm
and:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&amp;ie=ISO-8859-1&amp;q=Albert+Einstein%2C+God%2C+Religion%2C+Ethics&amp;btnG=Google+Search
and
http://atheism.about.com/sitesearch.htm?terms=Albert%20Einstein&amp;SUName=atheism&amp;TopNode=2928&amp;type=1
and: http://atheism.about.com/sitesearch.htm?terms=Albert%20Einstein&amp;SUName=atheism&amp;TopNode=2928&amp;type=1
and:
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/quotes_einstein.html</b>

<b>5. Albert Einstein Quotes (general): http://quotations.about.com/od/stillmorefamouspeople/a/AlbertEinstein2.htm</b>

<b>6. Albert Albert Quotes with sources and links to his life and contributions):
http://everything2.com/index.pl</b>

<b>7. Albert Einstein photographs:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+photos&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and:&lt;
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+photos&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>8. For Einstein books, articles, photos, and archival finding aids: http://www.aip.org/servlet/plainHistory?collection=HISTORY&amp;queryText=Albert+Einstein&amp;SEARCH+BUTTON.x=18&amp;SEARCH+BUTTON.y=7
and: http://www.aip.org/servlet/plainHistory?collection=HISTORY&amp;queryText=Albert+Einstein&amp;SEARCH+BUTTON.x=18&amp;SEARCH+BUTTON.y=7</b>

<b>9. PBS (Public Broadcasting System, TV) entries on “Albert Einstein”: http://www.pbs.org/search/search_results.html?q=Albert+Einstein&amp;btnG.x=10&amp;btnG.y=7
and: http://www.pbs.org/search/search_results.html?q=Albert+Einstein&amp;btnG.x=10&amp;btnG.y=7</b>

<b>10. Science writers on Albert Einstein:</b>

<b>(1): John Horgan, science writing program, Stevens Institute of Technology, NJ, articles on Einstein:
http://www.google.com/search?q=John+Horgan%2C+Einstein&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234&amp;aq=t
and: http://www.google.com/search?q=John+Horgan%2C+Einstein&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234&amp;aq=t</b>

<b>(2): Books on Albert Einstein by Don Howard, History of Science, Notre Dame University:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Don+Howard%2C+Einstein&amp;sourcenavclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and
http://www.google.com/search?q=Don+Howard%2C+Einstein&amp;sourcenavclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>(3): Lee Smolin, Theoretical Physics, Pennsylvania State University, articles, books on Einstein:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Lee+Smolin%2C+Einstein&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and
http://www.google.com/search?q=Lee+Smolin%2C+Einstein&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>(4): livescience.com &lt;http://livescience.com has entries on Einstein, including “Will There Ever be Another Einstein?”:
http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/ap_050418_einstein.html</b>

<b>11. For “Einstein, Federal Bureau of Investigation” massive report, see:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Federal+Bureau+of+Investigation&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and: http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Federal+Bureau+of+Investigation&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>12. For “Albert Einstein Timelines and Chronology,” see:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Albert+Einstein+Timelines+and+Chronology&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and: http://www.google.com/search?q=Albert+Einstein+Timelines+and+Chronology&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>13. For About.com &lt;http://About.com&gt;  search on “Albert Einstein,” see:
http://search.about.com/fullsearch.htm?terms=Albert%20Einstein</b>

<b>14. For entries on “Albert Einstein death,”
see:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Marie+Winteler&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234
and http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstein%2C+Marie+Winteler&amp;sourceid=navclient-ff&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS233US234</b>

<b>END OF REFERENCES. Email corrections, questions to: bfparker@frontiernet.net</b>

<b>About the Authors</b>

<b>1. For biographical account: “Betty &amp; Franklin Parker Looking Back Since 1946,”
access:   http://bfparker.blogster.com/betty_franklin_parker_looking.html
or: http://ourstory.com/story.html?v=10919
or: http://www.progressiveu.org/182455-betty-franklin-parker-looking-back-since-1946-57-years-of-a-good-idea-thanksgiving-2007-bfparker-frontiernet-net
or:  http://bootlog.com/index.php?cat=travelogs&amp;aut=bfparker
or: http://bootlog.com/index.php?cat=travelogs&amp;aut=bfparker</b>

<b>2. For a list of 153 of authors’ publications go to: http://www.worldcat.org
type in: Franklin Parker, 1921- and you should get the following URL:
http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=Parker%2C+Franklin%2C+1921-%2C&amp;=Search&amp;qt=results_page
or:
http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=Parker%2C+Franklin%2C+1921-%2C&amp;=Search&amp;qt=results_page</b>

<b>3. To access free E-Book full contents of Franklin Parker, <i>George Peabody, A Biography</i>. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1995 rev. edn., go to:
http://books.google.com/books?id=OPIbk-ZPnF4C&amp;dq=franklin+parker&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;source=web&amp;ots=qxV3RqTk1k&amp;sig=sXAmDL_CyCYd-Sl0n_IRl7g1S1I#PPP1,M1
or:
http://books.google.com/books?id=OPIbk-ZPnF4C&amp;dq=franklin+parker&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;source=web&amp;ots=qxV3RqTk1k&amp;sig=sXAmDL_CyCYd-Sl0n_IRl7g1S1I#PPP1,M1</b>

<b>Corrections, comments: bfparker@frontiernet.net END OF MANUSCRIPT

Posted by bfparker@frontiernet.net in 03:08:48 | Permalink | Comments (1) »

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Betty & Franklin Parker Looking Back Since 1946; 57 Years of a Good Idea; Thanksgiving 2007, bfparker@frontiernet.net

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Betty & Franklin Parker Looking Back Since 1946; 57 Years of a Good Idea; Thanksgiving 2007, bfparker@frontiernet.net

 


Happy Thanksgiving.  We want to hear from you. We still live in Pleasant Hill, TN., but since changing to home delivery 2 years ago we have had this new address: Betty & Franklin Parker,  63 Heritage Loop, Crossville, TN 38571, E-mail: bfparker@frontiernet.net.  (Our past fuller Looking Back Christmas 2005 and 2006 messages are condensed below and updated).

 


We were children of the Great Depression, shaped by World War II upheavals.  While Betty did well in grade school and high school, Frank took electrician trade classes in his vocational high school.  During the job-scarce Depression he also took radio technician courses at FDR’s National Youth Administration residential trade school at Quoddy Village near Eastport, Maine.

 


After Pearl Harbor, at Army basic training interviews (Feb. 1942), Frank’s electrical-radio studies, recorded on IBM punched cards, probably led to his being sent to the Air Force Morse radio code school in Chicago’s Coliseum.  When voice radio replaced Morse coders, Frank was sent to the Army Airways Communications System (AACS) headquarters, which had moved in early 1943 from crowded Washington, DC, to Asheville, NC.  AACS personnel managed WWII air traffic control towers and later radar guidance systems. 

 


Frank’s job in AACS publications was to update fast-changing classified Army, Air Force, and AACS regulations guiding headquarter planners in AACS worldwide operations, 1943 to early 1946.  On discharge (Feb. 1946) Frank returned to Asheville, NC, took summer 1946 courses at what later became the Univ. of NC at Asheville, entered Berea College, Sept. 1946.  His AACS experience led him to work, among other Berea College work/study jobs, in its Library Building.


We met in Sept. 1946 at Berea College, near Lexington, Ky.  Having the same last name, taking some classes together, not wanting a nice friendship to end, we became engaged in May 1949.  Frank earned a Berea College B.A. degree in English, Aug. ’49.  In Sept. ’49 he entered the Univ. of Illinois’ (Urbana) graduate M.S. in library science program while working part time in the Univ. of Ill.’s undergraduate library.  Betty graduated from Berea in June ’50, B.A., History.  We were married June 12, ’50, in Decatur, Ala., and went together to the Univ. of Ill., where Frank finished his M.S. degree, Aug. ’50.


We taught first at Ferrum College, Va., (1950-’52) near Roanoke, which then had a Berea-like work/study program.  Betty taught high school history and English.  Frank was librarian and taught speech.   

 


We took summer 1951 and summer ’52 graduate courses at George Peabody College for Teachers (hereafter Peabody), Nashville, adjacent to Vanderbilt Univ. (they merged in 1979), remaining from Sept. 1952 through Aug. ’56 graduation.  Betty taught English in a Nashville business school, her pay a free apt. facing former Ward-Belmont School, just bought by TN Baptists, now Belmont Univ., where Frank later worked as part-time librarian and Betty was the president’s secretary and English instructor.

Four years of part-time work and graduate study at Peabody were an important turning point.  Frank’s major study under respected History and Philosophy of Education Prof. Clifton L. Hall probably led Peabody Dean of Instruction Felix C. Robb to suggest that Frank undertake a dissertation on George Peabody’s (GP, 1795-1869) philanthropy.  This Mass.-born merchant in the South, then London-based banker-broker (1838-69, J.P. Morgan’s father was GP’s partner) founded Peabody Museums at Harvard and Yale and in Salem, Mass.; Peabody Library and Conservatory of Music, Baltimore; and the multi-million dollar Peabody Education Fund (PEF, 1867-1914) to aid public schools in 11 Southern states plus W.Va.  Peabody College of Vanderbilt Univ. is the PEF’s modern descendant.

Eager for the dissertation challenge, in May-Sept. 1954 we left our part-time Nashville jobs to read GP-related papers in these libraries: in D.C.: Lib. of Cong and National Archives.  In Baltimore: Peabody Institute Library and Conservatory of Music, now part of Johns Hopkins Univ., and the  Enoch Pratt Public Library.  GP influenced both Johns Hopkins and Enoch Pratt.   In NYC: Pierpont Morgan Library.  In Salem, Mass.: Peabody Essex Museum (has most of GP’s papers and business records); GP papers in Mass. towns of Peabody, Danvers, and Boston, Mass.; then at Peabody Museums at Harvard and Yale.

For travel to London, England, where GP worked 30 years as a securities broker-banker, a Berea friend and part-time travel agent booked an inexpensive third class round trip ship berth for us.  We read GP material at  the British Library Manuscript Room and Colindale Newspaper Collection, Public Record Office, Guildhall Record Office, and Westminster Abbey (where GP’s body lay in state).  We visited Peabody Homes where over 50,000 low income Londoners live in 20,000 affordable homes.  Frank also read GP-Queen Victoria letters at Windsor Castle (she wanted to knight him but he declined, not willing to give up U.S. citizenship). 

Back in Nashville, Jan. 1955, Frank worked part-time at Peabody, Betty taught English at Belmont Univ.  Together we compiled our notes and microfilm into a “George Peabody, Founder of Modern Philanthropy” dissertation, a task hastened when Frank was invited to give the Feb. 18, 1955, Peabody Founders’ Day address (later published) to an overflow audience.  In Aug. 1956, with the dissertation completed and accepted, Betty received  the M.A. degree in English; Frank the Ed. D. degree in Education Foundations.

In late August 1956, faced with two job choices and on Betty’s urging, we declined a job offer for Frank to head an Okla. state college’s new library.  He accepted instead a teaching job at State Univ. of NY, New Paltz, with Betty teaching high school English at nearby Wallkill, NY, 1956-57.

While we were still at Peabody, Aug. 1956, the visiting Univ. of Texas dean of education interviewed Frank, who explained that we were committed to SUNY, New Paltz.  But the UT dean kept in touch, and with the dept. head’s approval hired Frank for the 1957-58 school year.  Meanwhile, Frank won a competitive Kappa Delta Pi (Education Honor Society) Fellowship in International Education to study African education in the then multi-racial Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland in British central Africa.  Informing his U. Texas employers of this fellowship, they graciously gave us leave of absence.

Africa expert Alan Pifer, then Carnegie Foundation president, helped us to join newly opened Univ. College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (UCR&N), in what is now Harare, Zimbabwe.  We attended en route an Africanist conference at Hartford Seminary, CT; flew to London, attended a Cambridge Univ. British civil servants’ Africa conference, and reached what is now Zimbabwe via stops in Benghazi, Khartoum, Nairobi, Ndola, in what is now Zambia, and arrived in Salisbury (now Harare) and UCR&N, a multiracial university affiliated with the Univ. of London. 

By renting in turn five houses from privileged Whites on long leave in England we saw first hand wide disparity between well-off White owners and poor African servants.  Visiting many segregated White, African (mostly mission-run), and Asian schools, we soon saw that learning English as a second language was Africans’ key need in mastering other subjects.  With UCR&N backing and White-run African Education Department cooperation, we organized the first ever multiracial federation-wide conference on that subject, led by key mission and government teachers, principals, inspectors; experts on teaching methods, on writing and distributing textbooks, on training teachers, etc.  We recorded, edited, and distributed widely the conference proceedings.  Using Harare government archives we later wrote African Development and Education in Southern Rhodesia, Ohio State Univ. Press, 1960, reprinted by Greenwood Press, 1971.

Back in the U.S., Aug. 1958, we moved to Austin, TX, where Frank taught large undergraduate classes, striving for good teaching and scholarly attainment.  A U.S. Quaker family in Harare had told us of Austin’s American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) office where Betty went to work in peace education. 


Frank, active in key national societies in his teaching fields from our 7 UT-Austin years (1957-64) onward, was the History of Education Society’s national president, 1963-64; the Comparative and International Education Society’s (CIES) vice president, 1963-64, CIES Secretary, 1965-68; editor of the CIES Newsletter, 1968-86; and Southwest Philosophy of Education Society’s (SWPES) president, 1960.  At SWPES annual meetings, 1960-86, we presented original papers together in a dialogue form, all later published.


During Sept. 1961-May 1962, Frank was given U.TX.-Austin leave of absence as a Senior Fulbright Research Scholar in what is now Zambia.  After U.S. State Department orientation, Washington, DC, and U.S. Embassy in London orientation, we flew to the capital, Lusaka, were attached to nearby Rhodes-Livingstone Institute, from which we visited mission and government schools and did research in Lusaka’s national archives.  In London May 1962 we did research at the British Library and returned to Austin.  During 1962-63 Betty worked for several U-TX-Austin Bible professors and then taught in the U-TX-Austin Reading and Study Skills program

>We enjoyed the 7 busy, satisfying U-TX-Austin years (1957-64).  But in April 1964 a SWPES colleague, Univ. of Okla. in Norman, Philosophy of Education Prof. Lloyd P. Williams told Frank that he was wanted for an Excellence Fund tenured professorship.  Interviewed, accepted, with Betty’s approval, we relocated to Norman (1964-68).  Betty assisted Frank’s research and writing and was active on the League of Women Voters and regional AFSC boards.

 

In 1967, Frank’s U-Okla. dean, James G. Harlow, a prominant administrator, became president of West Va. Univ., Morgantown (WVU).  He told Frank at a farewell gathering to keep in touch.  In our fourth year at U-Okla-Norman, 1968, WVU’s Education Dean offered Frank a professorial chair funded by the Benedum Foundation.  Betty agreed that the opportunity was too good to decline.

 

Frank’s 18 years as WVU Benedum Professor of Education, 1868-1986, were the busiest in our lives.  He taught graduate classes and seminars in history and philosophy of education plus a specialty in Comparative and International Education.  Betty, though active in League of Women Voters, United Methodist Women, and a book review group, was Frank’s full partner in research, writing, and editing articles and books.  During 18 summers, free from WVU teaching, Frank taught in Canadian universities (Alberta, Newfoundland); and we traveled abroad studying schools in England, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Finland, USSR, Israel, China, about which we wrote books and articles.  As editor of the Comparative and International Education Society newsletter, Frank reviewed relevant education publications, teaching tools, and travel opportunities for teachers.

 

Vanderbilt University Press published Franklin Parker, George Peabody, A Biography, 1971.  During the WVU years Whitston Publishing Co. published our jointly edited 20 volume annotated bibliography series on education in various countries.  Frank wrote on U.S. education, on several African countries, and obituaries of prominent scholars for encyclopedia yearbooks: Americana Annual, Collier’s Encyclopedia Yearbook, Compton’s Yearbook, Reader’s Digest Almanac & Yearbook, Encyclopedia of Education, McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Biography, Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Dictionary of American Biography, and other publications.

 

After WVU retirement in 1986 Frank taught part-time at Northern AZ Univ., Flagstaff (1986-89), and Western Carolina Univ., Cullowhee, NC (1989-94), eight happy years using good university libraries for research and writing.  Frank published articles regularly in education honor society publications: Kappa Delta Pi and Phi Delta Kappa (life member of both); and in School & Society, which continued under several name changes.

 

Betty’s parents chose to live near us from 1977 for the rest of their lives, a wonderful time of sharing; in Morgantown, W.Va.; then near Flagstaff, AZ; then near Cullowhee, NC, where her Dad died in 1993.  Care needed by Betty’s mother led us to Uplands Retirement Village, Pleasant Hill, TN, where she died in 1998.   Both are buried in their hometown, Decatur, Ala.  Betty’s younger sister and her husband, Jo Ann and George Weber, moved in 1996 near Sparta, TN,  11 miles from us.

 

When we moved to Uplands, Pleasant Hill, TN, May 5, 1994, we were updating the 1971 George Peabody, A Biography, which Vanderbilt University Press reissued in 1995 as part of bicentennial celebrations of George Peabody’s birth (1795).  Working again on Peabody’s life story smoothed the transition to full retirement.  An added impetus was preparing to give several speeches about him in his birthplace in Essex County, Mass., where we spent several days in March 1995. 

 

At Uplands now over 13 years, we attend an exercise class 3 times a week, use a neighbor’s pool 6 times a week, walk as much as we can to various functions, have attended a few Elderhostels, and have every year for 13 years reviewed to an Uplands audience an important book in dialogue form.  Frank has been able to get these reviews and our other writings published in blog form.  Our current review of Walter Isaacson’s 2007 best seller on Albert Einstein will be given Apr. 21, 2008, Adshead, 10 A.M. (if you wish, we can send you a copy).

 

We end with this incident which happened in early Nov. 2007: A local yokel, often seeing us walking arm in arm, picnic lunch bags in hand, shouted from his parked battered pickup: “Grandpa, are you holding her up, or is she holding you up?”  “We lean on each other,” Frank replied with a grin.  Betty added: “If one falls, we both fall.”  We left laughing.  Fifty-seven years of a good idea.  Keep in touch.

 

For a list of 153 of our publications go to: http://www.worldcat.org     , type in: Franklin Parker, 1921-    and you should get the following URL:

 
http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=Parker%2C+Franklin%2C+1921-%2C&=Search&qt=results_page

 

For full access to 42 of our blog articles, go to: http://www.google.com     , click Search the Web, type: bfparker@frontiernet.net   , hit Search, and you should get the following URL:

http://www.google.com/custom?domains=homartemplatepractice.blogspot.com&q=bfparker@frontiernet.net&sa=Search&sitesearch=&client=pub-7556873783516109&forid=1&ie=ISO-8859-1&oe=ISO-8859-1&cof=GALT%3A%23333333%3BGL%3A1%3BDIV%3A%2337352E%3BVLC%3A000000%3BAH%3Acenter%3BBGC%3AC6B396%3BLBGC%3A8E866F%3BALC%3A000000%3BLC%3A000000%3BT%3A44423A%3BGFNT%3A663333%3BGIMP%3A663333%3BLH%3A50%3BLW%3A54%3BL%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fhomar.files.wordpress.com%2F2007%2F09%2Frizalman.jpg%3BS%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2F%3BFORID%3A1&hl=en

 

For many more of our blog articles (with some duplications) go to: 

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=bfparker@frontiernet.net&btnG=Google+Search

 

To access free E-Book full contents of Franklin Parker, George Peabody, A Biography.  Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1995 rev. edn., go to: http://books.google.com/books?id=OPIbk-ZPnF4C&dq=franklin+parker&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=qxV3RqTk1k&sig=sXAmDL_CyCYd-Sl0n_IRl7g1S1I#PPP1,M1                                          


END.  Contact:  bfparker@frontiernet.net

Posted by bfparker@frontiernet.net in 14:42:58 | Permalink | Comments (1) »

Wednesday, June 6, 2007

William Heard Kilpatrick (Nov. 20, 1871-Feb. 13, 1965), Progressive Educator and Progressive Philosopher of Education, by Franklin and Betty J. Parker, bfparker@frontiernet.net

William Heard Kilpatrick (Nov. 20, 1871-Feb. 13, 1965),  Progressive Educator and Progressive Philosopher of Education, by Franklin and Betty J. Parker, bfparker@frontiernet.net

KILPATRICK, WILLIAM HEARD (Nov. 20, 1871-Feb. 13, 1965), educator and philosopher of progressive education, was born in White Plains, GA, son of James Hines Kilpatrick, a Southern Baptist minister, and Edna Perrin Heard, a teacher. 

Kilpatrick had an orthodox upbringing and did well in school.  In 1888 he entered the sophomore class at Mercer University (Baptist, Macon, GA), excelled in mathematics, and earned the B.A. degree in 1891.  A Mercer trustee encouraged him to  study mathematics and physics at Johns Hopkins University, 1891-92.  There he was transported from a conservative rural atmosphere  to a liberal community of inquiring scholars.  Mercer granted him the M.A. degree in 1892 for his Johns Hopkins graduate study.  Because of administrative changes, he did not get a hoped-for Mercer teaching job.

His first teaching post at Blakely Institute, a combined elementary and secondary public school in southwest Georgia, required that he attend a July 1892 summer session at Rock College Normal School, Athens, GA.  There he learned of the educational theories of German educator Friedrich Froebel, kindergarten founder and learning-through-play advocate (Kilpatrick later wrote Froebel’s Kindergarten Principles Critically Examined, New York: Macmillan, 1916); and of Swiss educator Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, who urged teaching by encouragement without harsh discipline. He was impressed by Education Professor Otis Ashmore, who told of the interest stimulated among his students at Chatham Academy, Savannah, GA, so that they studied without supervision in his absence.  Ashmore’s example, Kilpatrick later wrote, was the origin for his 1918 project method article.  At an April 8, 1893, Chautauqua tent meeting at nearby Albany, GA, he heard visiting Cook County (IL) Normal School director and progressive educator Francis Wayland Parker.  He then read Leila E. Patridge, The “Quincy Method” Illustrated (New York: E.L. Kellogg, 1885), describing Parker’s successful progressive education methods used while he was Quincy, MA, school superintendent.  He taught mathematics in the eighth, ninth, and tenth grades at Blakely and was co-principal, 1892-95.  There he first experimented with nontraditional teaching and administration. 

He again studied at Johns Hopkins University, summer 1895; then taught seventh grade at and was principal of Anderson Elementary School, Savannah, GA, 1896-97.  He  also studied at the University of Chicago under John Dewey, summer 1898, later noting that he was not initially impressed by Dewey.  He was at Mercer University, 1897-1906, taught mathematics, was vice president, 1900, and acting president, 1904-06, but resigned when the trustees were concerned about his doubting the virgin birth.  Summer sessions he attended while at Mercer University included Cornell University, summer 1900, under Charles de Garmo, disciple of Johann Friedrich Herbart, and a Rockefeller Foundation-sponsored summer school for teachers, Knoxville, TN, where he heard psychologist G. Stanley Hall. He taught in Columbus, OH, in 1906-07 before enrolling as a student at Teachers College, Columbia University (hereafter TCCU), in 1907.

Dean James Earl Russell had merged progressivism and professionalism to make TCCU a leading U.S. teacher education center. Kilpatrick studied under Dewey, who had left Chicago for Columbia University in 1904, Paul Monroe, major U.S. educational historian, E. L. Thorndike, and others.  He impressed Monroe in a class paper documenting the beginning of  Dutch schools in New Amsterdam (New York) in 1638, not 1633, as previously believed.  Teaching history of education part time, he began a dissertation on Benedict Spinoza, did not find enough material, returned to the origin of Dutch schools, and completed his dissertation in 1911 (Monroe helped get it published by the Department of the Interior as The Dutch Schools of New Netherland and Colonial New York. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1912). 

In 1908 Kilpatrick wrote in his diary, “Professor Dewey has made a great difference in my thinking.”  Dewey wrote to Professor John A. MacVannel, Kilpatrick’s major professor, “He is the best I ever had.”  Kilpatrick spent the rest of his professional career and long life at TCCU where he was a student, 1907-09; received the Ph.D. in 1912, was lecturer in education, 1909-11; assistant professor, 1911-15; associate professor, 1915-18; professor of philosophy of education, 1918-37; and thereafter emeritus professor.

Kilpatrick was catapulted to fame by his 1918 article, “The Project Method,” Teachers College Record, 19 (September 1918), pp. 319-335.  By “project” Kilpatrick meant any purposeful learning activity which the student wanted to do wholeheartedly.  This active, interest-motivated, and life-like activity was seized upon by progressive teachers as a useful curriculum device. Course content was divided into units or projects students could complete alone or in small groups under teacher guidance.  The project method, seen as a welcome antidote to traditional education, gave Dewey’s child-centered education a practical teaching methodology and helped the shift from subject- and teacher-based education to child-centered education.  It was popular in progressive elementary schools in the 1930s and was revived in the open classroom atmosphere of the late 1960s.

Kilpatrick commanded attention at TCCU by his courtly manner, erect stature, and lion-like mane of silvery white hair.  He attracted students by using small group discussions.  With notable skill he divided educational problems among small groups in a large class, each group discussed a specific problem, a group chair reported findings to the large class (numbering in the hundreds), followed by discussion and debate. His success in this procedure earned for him the title of the “Million Dollar Professor,” which came from the headline of a New York Post article (March 6, 1937) by David Davidson, estimating that his 35,000 graduate students paid over a million dollars in tuition fees to TCCU before he retired in 1937.

He married Marie Beman Guyton (they had three children) on December 27, l898 (she died May 1907); he then married Margaret Manigault Pinckney on November 26, 1908 (she died November 1938); and finally married Marion Y. Ostrander on May 8, 1940 (she had been his secretary).

He  taught summers at the University of Georgia, 1906, 1908, and 1909; the University of the South (Knoxville), 1907; was visiting professor, Northwestern University, 1937-38, and taught summer sessions there, 1939, 1940, 1941; taught summer sessions, Stanford University, 1938; University of Kentucky, 1942; University of North Carolina, 1942; and University of Minnesota, 1946.  His trips abroad included school visits, lectures, and meetings with prominent educators in Italy, Switzerland, and France,  May-June 1912; Europe and Asia, August 1926-June 1927; and round the world, August-December 1929.

He received honorary LL.D. degrees from Mercer University, 1926; Columbia University, 1929; and Bennington College, 1938 (which he helped found in 1923 and where he was president of the board of trustees, 1931-38); the honorary D.H.L. degree from the College of Jewish Studies, 1952; and the Brandeis Award for humanitarian service, 1953.

After retiring from TCCU, 1937, he was president of the New York Urban League, 1941-51; chairman of American Youth for World Youth, 1946-51; chairman of the Bureau of International Education, 1940-51; and on the board of directors of the League for Industrial Democracy.

Kilpatrick had severe critics but many more admirers and followers. His eighty-fifth birthday, November 20, 1956, celebrated at Horace Mann Auditorium, TCCU, resulted in a special March 1957 issue of Progressive Education, “William Heard Kilpatrick Eighty-Fifth Anniversary,” containing 10 articles.  Both heralded and criticized as John Dewey’s chief educational interpreter, Kilpatrick was a leading advocate of progressive education. He died after a long illness at age 93 on February 13, 1965.

References

Kilpatrick gave to the Special Collections, Teachers College Library, Columbia University a handwritten diary (begun 1904) of over 40 volumes, scrapbooks, unpublished papers, and a two-volume typescript from taped interviews with his biographer, Samuel Tenenbaum.  An oral history memoir is in the Special Collections, Butler Library, Columbia University Archives.  His 14 books and 375 articles are listed in “Writings of William Heard Kilpatrick,” Studies in Philosophy and Education, Vol. 1 (November 1961), pp. 220-230. 

His more important books include Foundations of Method, New York: Macmillan, 1925, which expands on his project method (translated into Chinese, Japanese, and Russian); Education for a Changing Civilization, Macmillan, 1926 (translated into Japanese, Russian, Arabic, Portuguese, German, and Italian); Education and the Social Crisis, A Proposed Program, New York: Liveright, 1932; The Educational Frontier, New York: Appleton-Century, 1933, containing his articles and articles by other leading progressives (he was book editor), and said to be the characteristic progressivist work of the 1930s; Group Education for a Democracy, New York: Association Press, 1940 (translated into Japanese, Korean, and Spanish); and Philosophy of Education, New York, 1951 (translated into Spanish).

Samuel Tenenbaum, William Heard Kilpatrick: Trailblazer in Education, New York: Harper, 1951, is the authorized biography based on taped interviews. Other biographical sketches are William Graebner, “William Heard Kilpatrick” in the Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement Seven, 1961-1965, John A. Garraty, editor, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1981, pp. 434-436; and Franklin Parker, “William Heard Kilpatrick, 1871-1965,” School and Society, Vol. 93, No. 2264 (October 16, 1965), pp. 368-371.  Insights about Kilpatrick’s influence are in John L. Childs, American Pragmatism and Education, New York: Holt, 1956; Lawrence A. Cremin, The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education,1876-1957, New York:  Alfred A. Knopf, 1961; Ernst Papanek, “William Heard Kilpatrick’s International Influence: Teacher of World’s Teachers,” Progressive Education, Vol.34, No.2 (March 1957), pp. 54-57 (entire issue has 10 evaluative articles honoring Kilpatrick on his eighty-fifth birthday); and “W. H. Kilpatrick: After 93 Years,” Teachers College Record, Vol. 66, No.4 (January 1965), pp. 346-364, containing three articles.  Topical selections from his writings are compared with others in Leslie R. Perry, editor, Bertrand Russell, A.S. Neill, Homer Lane, W.H. Kilpatrick:  Four Progressive Educators, London:  Collier-Macmillan, 1967. 

Critics include Albert Lynd, Quackery in the Public Schools, New York:  Grosset and Dunlap, 1953, pp. 212-253; and Augustin G. Rudd, Bending the Twig: The Revolution in Education and Its Effect on Our Children, New York: Sons of the American Revolution, 1957.  A Catholic critic is Joseph McGlade, Progressive Educators and the Catholic Church, Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1953.

Thirteen contributors evaluated his influence in a special issue on “William Heard Kilpatrick, 1875-1965,” Educational Theory, Vol. 16, No.1 (January 1966), 98 pp.  Obituaries appeared in The New York Times, February 14, 1965, p. 92; New York Herald Tribune, February 15, 1965; and San Francisco Chronicle, February 15, 1965, p. 26.  END OF MANUSCRIPT.

Send comments, corrections to bfparker@frontiernet.net

Addendum: 24 of Franklin and Betty J. Parker’s book titles  are listed in: http://www.library.vanderbilt.edu/peabody/about/alum6.html#P

For their writings in blog form, enter    bfparker   in google.com  or in any other search engine.

Posted by bfparker@frontiernet.net in 19:34:04 | Permalink | Comments Off

Sunday, June 3, 2007

William Heard Kilpatrick (Nov. 20, 1871-Feb. 13, 1965), Progressive Educator and Philosopher, by Franklin and Betty J. Parker, bfparker@frontiernet.net

William HeWilliam Heard Kilpatrick (Nov. 20, 1871-Feb. 13, 1965),  Progressive Educator and Philosopher, by Franklin and Betty J. Parker, bfparker@frontiernet.net 
KILPATRICK, WILLIAM HEARD (Nov. 20, 1871-Feb. 13, 1965), educator and philosopher of progressive education, was born in White Plains, GA, son of James Hines Kilpatrick, a Southern Baptist minister, and Edna Perrin Heard, a teacher.  

Kilpatrick had an orthodox upbringing and did well in school.  In 1888 he entered the sophomore class at Mercer University (Baptist, Macon, GA), excelled in mathematics, and earned the B.A. degree in 1891.  A Mercer trustee encouraged him to  study mathematics and physics at Johns Hopkins University, 1891-92.  There he was transported from a conservative rural atmosphere  to a liberal community of inquiring scholars.  Mercer granted him the M.A. degree in 1892 for his Johns Hopkins graduate study.  Because of administrative changes, he did not get a hoped-for Mercer teaching job.


His first teaching post at Blakely Institute, a combined elementary and secondary public school in southwest Georgia, required that he attend a July 1892 summer session at Rock College Normal School, Athens, GA.  There he learned of the educational theories of German educator Friedrich Froebel, kindergarten founder and learning-through-play advocate (Kilpatrick later wrote Froebel’s Kindergarten Principles Critically Examined, New York: Macmillan, 1916); and of Swiss educator Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, who urged teaching by encouragement without harsh discipline. He was impressed by Education Professor Otis Ashmore, who told of the interest stimulated among his students at Chatham Academy, Savannah, GA, so that they studied without supervision in his absence.  Ashmore’s example, Kilpatrick later wrote, was the origin for his 1918 project method article.  At an April 8, 1893, Chautauqua tent meeting at nearby Albany, GA, he heard visiting Cook County (IL) Normal School director and progressive educator Francis Wayland Parker.  He then read Leila E. Patridge, The “Quincy Method” Illustrated (New York: E.L. Kellogg, 1885), describing Parker’s successful progressive education methods used while he was Quincy, MA, school superintendent.  He taught mathematics in the eighth, ninth, and tenth grades at Blakely and was co-principal, 1892-95.  There he first experimented with nontraditional teaching and administration. 

He again studied at Johns Hopkins University, summer 1895; then taught seventh grade at and was principal of Anderson Elementary School, Savannah, GA, 1896-97.  He  also studied at the University of Chicago under John Dewey, summer 1898, later noting that he was not initially impressed by Dewey.  He was at Mercer University, 1897-1906, taught mathematics, was vice president, 1900, and acting president, 1904-06, but resigned when the trustees were concerned about his doubting the virgin birth.  Summer sessions he attended while at Mercer University included Cornell University, summer 1900, under Charles de Garmo, disciple of Johann Friedrich Herbart, and a Rockefeller Foundation-sponsored summer school for teachers, Knoxville, TN, where he heard psychologist G. Stanley Hall. He taught in Columbus, OH, in 1906-07 before enrolling as a student at Teachers College, Columbia University (hereafter TCCU), in 1907.

Dean James Earl Russell had merged progressivism and professionalism to make TCCU a leading U.S. teacher education center. Kilpatrick studied under Dewey, who had left Chicago for Columbia University in 1904, Paul Monroe, major U.S. educational historian, E. L. Thorndike, and others.  He impressed Monroe in a class paper documenting the beginning of  Dutch schools in New Amsterdam (New York) in 1638, not 1633, as previously believed.  Teaching history of education part time, he began a dissertation on Benedict Spinoza, did not find enough material, returned to the origin of Dutch schools, and completed his dissertation in 1911 (Monroe helped get it published by the Department of the Interior as The Dutch Schools of New Netherland and Colonial New York. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1912). 


In 1908 Kilpatrick wrote in his diary, “Professor Dewey has made a great difference in my thinking.”  Dewey wrote to Professor John A. MacVannel, Kilpatrick’s major professor, “He is the best I ever had.”  Kilpatrick spent the rest of his professional career and long life at TCCU where he was a student, 1907-09; received the Ph.D. in 1912, was lecturer in education, 1909-11; assistant professor, 1911-15; associate professor, 1915-18; professor of philosophy of education, 1918-37; and thereafter emeritus professor.


Kilpatrick was catapulted to fame by his 1918 article, “The Project Method,” Teachers College Record, 19 (September 1918), pp. 319-335.  By “project” Kilpatrick meant any purposeful learning activity which the student wanted to do wholeheartedly.  This active, interest-motivated, and life-like activity was seized upon by progressive teachers as a useful curriculum device. Course content was divided into units or projects students could complete alone or in small groups under teacher guidance.  The project method, seen as a welcome antidote to traditional education, gave Dewey’s child-centered education a practical teaching methodology and helped the shift from subject- and teacher-based education to child-centered education.  It was popular in progressive elementary schools in the 1930s and was revived in the open classroom atmosphere of the late 1960s.


Kilpatrick commanded attention at TCCU by his courtly manner, erect stature, and lion-like mane of silvery white hair.  He attracted students by using small group discussions.  With notable skill he divided educational problems among small groups in a large class, each group discussed a specific problem, a group chair reported findings to the large class (numbering in the hundreds), followed by discussion and debate. His success in this procedure earned for him the title of the “Million Dollar Professor,” which came from the headline of a New York Post article (March 6, 1937) by David Davidson, estimating that his 35,000 graduate students paid over a million dollars in tuition fees to TCCU before he retired in 1937.

He married Marie Beman Guyton (they had three children) on December 27, l898 (she died May 1907); he then married Margaret Manigault Pinckney on November 26, 1908 (she died November 1938); and finally married Marion Y. Ostrander on May 8, 1940 (she had been his secretary).

He  taught summers at the University of Georgia, 1906, 1908, and 1909; the University of the South (Knoxville), 1907; was visiting professor, Northwestern University, 1937-38, and taught summer sessions there, 1939, 1940, 1941; taught summer sessions, Stanford University, 1938; University of Kentucky, 1942; University of North Carolina, 1942; and University of Minnesota, 1946.  His trips abroad included school visits, lectures, and meetings with prominent educators in Italy, Switzerland, and France,  May-June 1912; Europe and Asia, August 1926-June 1927; and round the world, August-December 1929.

He received honorary LL.D. degrees from Mercer University, 1926; Columbia University, 1929; and Bennington College, 1938 (which he helped found in 1923 and where he was president of the board of trustees, 1931-38); the honorary D.H.L. degree from the College of Jewish Studies, 1952; and the Brandeis Award for humanitarian service, 1953.

After retiring from TCCU, 1937, he was president of the New York Urban League, 1941-51; chairman of American Youth for World Youth, 1946-51; chairman of the Bureau of International Education, 1940-51; and on the board of directors of the League for Industrial Democracy.

Kilpatrick had severe critics but many more admirers and followers. His eighty-fifth birthday, November 20, 1956, celebrated at Horace Mann Auditorium, TCCU, resulted in a special March 1957 issue of Progressive Education, “William Heard Kilpatrick Eighty-Fifth Anniversary,” containing 10 articles.  Both heralded and criticized as John Dewey’s chief educational interpreter, Kilpatrick was a leading advocate of progressive education. He died after a long illness at age 93 on February 13, 1965.

References

Kilpatrick gave to the Special Collections, Teachers College Library, Columbia University a handwritten diary (begun 1904) of over 40 volumes, scrapbooks, unpublished papers, and a two-volume typescript from taped interviews with his biographer, Samuel Tenenbaum.  An oral history memoir is in the Special Collections, Butler Library, Columbia University Archives.  His 14 books and 375 articles are listed in “Writings of William Heard Kilpatrick,” Studies in Philosophy and Education, Vol. 1 (November 1961), pp. 220-230. 

His more important books include Foundations of Method, New York: Macmillan, 1925, which expands on his project method (translated into Chinese, Japanese, and Russian); Education for a Changing Civilization, Macmillan, 1926 (translated into Japanese, Russian, Arabic, Portuguese, German, and Italian); Education and the Social Crisis, A Proposed Program, New York: Liveright, 1932; The Educational Frontier, New York: Appleton-Century, 1933, containing his articles and articles by other leading progressives (he was book editor), and said to be the characteristic progressivist work of the 1930s; Group Education for a Democracy, New York: Association Press, 1940 (translated into Japanese, Korean, and Spanish); and Philosophy of Education, New York, 1951 (translated into Spanish).

Samuel Tenenbaum, William Heard Kilpatrick: Trailblazer in Education, New York: Harper, 1951, is the authorized biography based on taped interviews. Other biographical sketches are William Graebner, “William Heard Kilpatrick” in the Dictionary of American Biography,Supplement Seven, 1961-1965, John A. Garraty, editor, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1981, pp. 434-436; and Franklin Parker, “William Heard Kilpatrick, 1871-1965,” School and Society, Vol. 93, No. 2264 (October 16, 1965), pp. 368-371.  Insights about Kilpatrick’s influence are in John L. Childs, American Pragmatism and Education, New York: Holt, 1956; Lawrence A. Cremin, The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education,1876-1957, New York:  Alfred A. Knopf, 1961; Ernst Papanek, “William Heard Kilpatrick’s International Influence: Teacher of World’s Teachers,” Progressive Education, Vol.34, No.2 (March 1957), pp. 54-57 (entire issue has 10 evaluative articles honoring Kilpatrick on his eighty-fifth birthday); and “W. H. Kilpatrick: After 93 Years,” Teachers College Record, Vol. 66, No.4 (January 1965), pp. 346-364, containing three articles.  Topical selections from his writings are compared with others in Leslie R. Perry, editor, Bertrand Russell, A.S. Neill, Homer Lane, W.H. Kilpatrick:  Four Progressive Educators, London:  Collier-Macmillan, 1967. 

Critics include Albert Lynd, Quackery in the Public Schools, New York:  Grosset and Dunlap, 1953, pp. 212-253; and Augustin G. Rudd, Bending the Twig: The Revolution in Education and Its Effect on Our Children, New York: Sons of the American Revolution, 1957.  A Catholic critic is Joseph McGlade, Progressive Educators and the Catholic Church, Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1953.

Thirteen contributors evaluated his influence in a special issue on “William Heard Kilpatrick, 1875-1965,” Educational Theory, Vol. 16, No.1 (January 1966), 98 pp.  Obituaries appeared in The New York Times, February 14, 1965, p. 92; New York Herald Tribune, February 15, 1965; and San Francisco Chronicle, February 15, 1965, p. 26.  END OF MANUSCRIPT.

Send comments, corrections to bfparker@frontiernet.net

Addendum: 24 of Franklin and Betty J. Parker’s book titles  are listed in: http://www.library.vanderbilt.edu/peabody/about/alum6.html#P

For their writings in blog form, enter    bfparker   in google.com  or in any other search engine.

 

Posted by bfparker@frontiernet.net in 22:06:31 | Permalink | Comments (1) »